Today's episode features Will Griffiths, General Manager of Animoca Brands' Motorverse. Learn how Animoca Brands is pioneering digital property rights for gamers with their innovative car-centric gaming ecosystem. We discuss the Motorverse's key pillars, including meaningful ownership and true interoperability, and explore the future of web3 gaming.
[00:00:17] Hello, welcome back to the Strange Water Podcast. Thank you for joining us for another discussion.
[00:00:24] Today's guest is Will Griffiths, General Manager of Animoca Brands Motorverse.
[00:00:31] Animoca Brands is a video game and venture capital company with a mission to deliver digital
[00:00:37] property rights to the world's gamers and internet users. One of the most exciting
[00:00:43] projects in development is the Motorverse, an interoperable ecosystem of car-centric
[00:00:48] games and experiences. This conversation is an incredibly exciting exploration of the intersection
[00:00:56] of Web3 and gaming. Over the next hour you'll hear a master class in everything from the
[00:01:04] issues with previous attempts at Web3 gaming to creating AAA caliber Web3 native games
[00:01:12] to building dynamic ecosystems and so much more. One more thing before we begin,
[00:01:19] please do not take financial advice from this or any podcast. Ethereum will change the world one
[00:01:25] day but you can easily lose all of your money between now and then. Another note, during the
[00:01:31] following conversation you'll hear both Will and I refer to specific car brands. These
[00:01:37] references are purely hypothetical and do not imply partnerships, products or games with these
[00:01:43] brands. Okay and now Will Griffiths. Will, thank you so much for joining us on the
[00:01:56] Strangewater podcast. Great to be here Rex. Thanks for having me on. Of course, of course.
[00:02:01] So I am a big believer that the most important part of every conversation
[00:02:05] are the people in it. So with that as kind of like a starter can you give us a little bit
[00:02:09] about who you are, how you found this space and like what ultimately brought you to building games?
[00:02:16] Yeah sure. So I've always been a video gamer and a Lego guy and so I went into engineering
[00:02:25] and I did an engineering degree in the UK and I popped out of that and ended up working
[00:02:30] in, I was working for an oil company for a while for BP and then I went into ethical
[00:02:36] hacking. I started working for a company called Accenture, you've probably heard of this consulting
[00:02:42] company and that was really interesting. So like breaking bank security and explaining to people
[00:02:46] how to fix it and stuff. And then I decided, I was kind of watching the game space and I decided
[00:02:51] to get into the game space so I ran my own company at the beginning of the App Store
[00:02:56] and I had a lot of fun but I was really young and I didn't really make any money but I met a
[00:03:00] lot of people and I decided that was the industry that I wanted to work in. So then I went
[00:03:04] and worked for a company called Natural Motion who make video games and I was a producer there
[00:03:10] on five different games. And the last one was in the iPhone 5 keynote which was loads of fun,
[00:03:16] also mega stressful because it was all new at the beginning of the whole free to play era
[00:03:21] and we got bought by Zynga on my last day and I moved to Australia and in Australia I
[00:03:28] moved there for family reasons and I got into casinos and online casinos as a living not as
[00:03:34] a kind of you know a hobby. And that was like totally like an interesting new world where
[00:03:41] we're taking these principles from games and then applying them to the gambling space.
[00:03:47] I was part of a growth story with a company called VGW so we went from a few sort of
[00:03:52] handfuls to several hundred people and we made you know quite an interesting foray into the
[00:03:57] online gambling space. In the background I got married and had two kids and then I decided to
[00:04:03] leave. I kind of woke up, I was like I'm working in casinos it's not something that I really
[00:04:07] wanted to do with my life so I moved into crypto and built a with a small team here
[00:04:14] and we built a consumer facing fintech app that kind of takes you the round up transactions
[00:04:21] from your credit card and invests them in a crypto portfolio. So that was loads of fun,
[00:04:25] I think that company's still going and around about this time we decided to move back to the
[00:04:28] UK and I started working for a company called Codemasters who made the Formula One games and
[00:04:33] the rally games and I was in charge of live service there and we built out their live
[00:04:38] service function so that's like how you monetize after launch. And then that company
[00:04:43] got bought by Electronic Arts and I went into Electronic Arts and I was basically in their
[00:04:48] strategy team working out how to approach the metaverse and the future of sport and EA sports
[00:04:53] and all this kind of stuff so very very interesting. But I was in the UK in Oxford
[00:04:58] and everyone I worked with it was in California and San Francisco so this was like kind of a
[00:05:03] weird dynamic where everyone I worked with was asleep until sort of four o'clock in the afternoon
[00:05:08] so I did that like we did some really interesting stuff where they're for about a year
[00:05:12] and then I decided that actually I wanted to you know work with people in my own time zone
[00:05:16] a little bit at least and so I started looking around and I met Robbie Young who's
[00:05:20] the CEO of investment for Animoca Brands and he told me about this ecosystem out here where
[00:05:26] they were basically combining crypto assets with racing games and racing IP and trying to sort
[00:05:33] of make sense of that. And they had a few games live, they bought a few different studios
[00:05:37] but they needed someone to head it up and that's what I've taken as my role. So I've
[00:05:42] been at Animoca for about 18 months and that's the sort of culmination of the first
[00:05:49] nine to ten months was this concept of the motorverse which we launched in February this
[00:05:56] year at NFT Paris. So that's sort of my background and so yeah it's like a bend diagram of
[00:06:03] consulting crypto gambling. I don't know if you can have a four-way bend diagram,
[00:06:09] I don't think it works unless you do it in 3D but then also video games and racing
[00:06:14] and I'm right in the middle of it. Awesome man that's super cool and I'm super excited to get to
[00:06:20] the crypto aspect of this but before we get there I would be remiss if I didn't queue
[00:06:25] in on the specific part of your story and ask you. So you went from BP, Accenture,
[00:06:32] then you went into games and then into gambling and so I would love for you to talk about this
[00:06:37] transition from games into gambling and I think this is maybe a controversial statement
[00:06:46] right but there's something inherently gambling about everything that touches crypto and so
[00:06:51] I would love for you to just reflect a little bit on what are the principles that you brought
[00:06:55] from gaming into gambling, what are the things you learned from gambling about gaming and
[00:07:02] I would love if we could kind of point this in towards like how does this inform
[00:07:06] Animoca and the MotorGP universe. So Animoca's vision is to build the open metaverse
[00:07:14] and they're leveraging web3 technology to do that so it's sort of like the opposite of what
[00:07:20] meta set out to do which is like a walled garden so yeah our chairman's vision is to
[00:07:27] make it fair for all and they're able the cool thing about web3 is it has this financial
[00:07:34] layer that you wouldn't have necessarily been able to access easy this transfer of value
[00:07:39] using fungible tokens or non-fungible tokens and so when I was working in video games
[00:07:47] the games were making the transition it was around so 2010 making the transition from
[00:07:52] their premium model where people just pay a fixed amount and then they're able to then
[00:07:59] play the game as much as they want and that kind of game is designed to just be fun
[00:08:04] like that at its core so there was this sort of transition where you have these designers
[00:08:11] who are like incredibly creative people who are really good at making like nice gameplay loops
[00:08:17] where you know for example in a first person shooter like the fun part of the first person
[00:08:24] shooter is being able to identify a target and then rapidly using the controls and some skill
[00:08:30] zoning on that target and then the payoff is the kill and so that's what you find a lot
[00:08:36] of people who are really good at that and really understand like the human psychology
[00:08:40] and then in free to play games it's hard because you're trying to make money after the point
[00:08:48] that someone's down at the game so they started to insert these core loops where basically
[00:08:56] you finish a level you get some reward that reward allows you to upgrade your kit your car
[00:09:03] your guns or anything whatever and then that makes you better and able to kill more monsters
[00:09:09] or beat more people in the next level and they're able to insert a monetization step inside that
[00:09:15] that out so you can do it just by grinding or you can pay and get ahead and you know
[00:09:20] progress faster and then when I moved into gambling it's always like it's gone that
[00:09:27] core looping gambling already exists it's in its most kind of distilled form which is you
[00:09:32] know it's quite ugly in some ways but it's just taking that experience making it random
[00:09:40] so instead of like moving your gun around and shooting somebody you just press a button and
[00:09:44] then you kind of hope that maybe you win and if you do then you then you get your your
[00:09:48] monetization element and then you can use that to go back into it so to me it was like a
[00:09:54] distillation of that core loop in its simplest form with intermittent reward which is
[00:09:59] intermittent reward is this thing that's sort of like a psychological thing if you put a rat in a
[00:10:03] cage and it keeps pressing a button event then it sometimes gets something awesome and sometimes
[00:10:08] it just gets water that's more interesting to the to the rat because they don't know
[00:10:13] what they're going to get than it than it's normally so I kind of observed it from a
[00:10:19] from a kind of gameplay point of view so when I came into gambling I wanted to make the
[00:10:25] gambling experience more fun so my instinct was to like try and introduce skill and try and
[00:10:31] introduce something that people would want to play but obviously the challenge with that is
[00:10:38] there's always there's already some very well established tropes in the in the gambling
[00:10:42] industry where you know it's a slot machine or poker like there's these games everyone
[00:10:46] knows them there's not a lot of innovation going on around like the different types
[00:10:50] they've already kind of taken shape so you know I learned a lot doing that and you become good
[00:10:56] at optimizing things like user experience and that kind of thing but to me it was a little
[00:11:01] bit kind of I don't know kind of ethically you know not really aligned with what I
[00:11:07] what I really believe in you know what I want to add to the world so crypto to me is an
[00:11:12] interesting development because it means that you can basically build games that you
[00:11:20] you're putting money in and to some extent there's a risk when you put the money in
[00:11:24] but you also have control over the value of the assets so what do I mean by that I mean
[00:11:29] if you buy a car and spend a lot of time working on that car and developing it and taking it
[00:11:37] to different championships and winning different races and stuff you're kind of building a
[00:11:40] story around that car so your time starts to have value so it's a sort of heady combination
[00:11:45] of the two it's not easy so the transition from premium games to free-to-play games is a huge
[00:11:52] quite a long process now free-to-play is really normal and there's well established
[00:11:56] ways of monetizing that people are comfortable with and understand and I think we're seeing
[00:12:00] slowly that same process being applied to web through. This might be like the right segue
[00:12:06] to get us into motorgp and like or sorry the motorverse and what it is but I guess like
[00:12:12] the big question for me around gaming and crypto is like everything you said makes so much sense
[00:12:17] and like without putting any judgment on this it's kind of like let's take the best parts
[00:12:21] of gaming which are the interactiveness the like skill based progression the ownership and
[00:12:29] like the just kind of like emotional attachment and then let's take the best parts of gambling
[00:12:33] which are like risk and um like upside and uh I don't know there's bad size of gambling too
[00:12:40] let's be clear but the the like perennial question of like how do we do crypto games is like
[00:12:48] we have items and games and we can make them like nfts or express ownership or something on
[00:12:53] somehow but like if these items and games are like at the end of the day they're just useful
[00:13:00] in the game like what are what's actually being built here and how is this not just like
[00:13:06] building a gambling layer on top of like some company's game yeah I think so it's interesting
[00:13:12] they're definitely parallels I mean those people say that's right but there's there's
[00:13:16] definitely parallels with free to play so there was a period early on in the free to play
[00:13:22] phase right where the app store had a chart that was like the most popular game and then
[00:13:29] they had a chart that of games that as in the games that had the most downloads but they
[00:13:34] had another chart of the games that made the most money like top grossing and so there were a bunch
[00:13:40] of bunch of companies making games and then just selling them and and you know they'd be the
[00:13:44] top of that chart and they'd be really pleasing themselves um and they were also at the top
[00:13:49] of the the top grossing charts and then over time like some good examples of free to play
[00:13:56] games or some effective examples of free to play games started to rise up and then over
[00:14:01] the course of about two or three years suddenly the top grossing charts had no premium games and
[00:14:07] they were all free to play so what the result of that was that you had all these studios that
[00:14:11] were really good at making premium games and the executives in the studios would have games
[00:14:17] in motion that were being built and they would say oh hang on a minute there's this free to
[00:14:22] play thing let's just do that because we'll make those more money and so then you had
[00:14:27] design teams that were not equipped you know with the kind of economic design and stuff
[00:14:33] to be able to to change their current game into a free to play game so you end up with these
[00:14:39] really weird bad examples of free to play and it got really badly slammed and I think we see
[00:14:45] that I have seen that in in web 3 too so you know people are like oh well you know
[00:14:51] they're starting with the technology and they're trying to like shoehorn it into a game and it
[00:14:58] doesn't really make sense so you can't just take a normal game and just make everything
[00:15:03] NFT's job done so that's what we're trying to do with the motorverse is something a bit
[00:15:08] different so we're thinking about what are the core things that you can do with web 3
[00:15:16] that are new tools for games designers and then what does that mean like what kind of games
[00:15:22] would we like to make and like what kind of ecosystem would be like to enable
[00:15:27] and that's where we're coming from so we're trying to build it from the ground up
[00:15:32] so often describe it as having a tool set available to a design team and then there's
[00:15:37] like an extra compartment that you've just discovered with these extra tools in from web
[00:15:41] 3 and then just building it in realistically so let me repeat back what you said and tell me if I
[00:15:46] got the point which is basically up until what you guys are doing and like the newest latest stuff
[00:15:53] what crypto games essentially meant is like let's go find whatever's the top of the charts
[00:15:59] and figure out a way to slap crypto into it and like maybe we're slapping crypto into it
[00:16:03] because we think we can drive extra revenue maybe it's a marketing thing like maybe we
[00:16:07] don't even know why but our vc told us that crypto is good or something but what you're saying
[00:16:13] is that that's never going to work because you're essentially asking like carpenters to go build a
[00:16:20] something out of glass and what you're saying is that the approach needs to start like with
[00:16:25] the primitives at like ground zero and say like this is what web 3 brings to the table
[00:16:30] now how do we build around that as opposed to this is what we have in web 2 how do we
[00:16:34] graft on web 3 to it yeah exactly and also you know the way that the charts are constructed
[00:16:40] you know there is there's not a very mature ecosystem so for example there's dap radar
[00:16:45] and it measures like how many unique active wallets you have and if you have many many
[00:16:49] unique active wallets then you might be at the top of the dap radar chart but that doesn't
[00:16:54] necessarily mean that you have a recipe for success it just means that you've worked out
[00:17:00] how to you know game that particular metric so i think there's people are still understanding
[00:17:08] how to attribute value to a wallet for example so and what does an active wallet mean does it
[00:17:13] mean that somebody i think it's measures just like somebody connected their wallet and there
[00:17:18] was a transaction or some kind of smart contract activity associated with that wallet
[00:17:23] but obviously you and i both know that that doesn't necessarily translate into value
[00:17:28] so it's about for me it's about thinking long term like what is it the web 3 can offer that's
[00:17:34] genuinely different to the mass market and so for the most of us and i do this test so when
[00:17:43] i lived in so i just moved to australia when i lived in the uk we got kids in in school
[00:17:50] and we'd go to the pub you know with the dads you know every couple of weeks now you
[00:17:55] know just catch up and complain about having small kids and we would talk about you know all
[00:18:00] different things there's loads of different people you know like plumbers engineers like
[00:18:04] doctors you know knocking around not many people in games and so i'd sort of come up
[00:18:09] with different theories and ideas and then float them you know casually in a pub and see
[00:18:14] whether people kind of latched onto them and the idea behind that was like is this something
[00:18:19] is actually meaningful to you that it's easy to understand and digest and therefore this should
[00:18:26] have some kind of traction in the mass market and for me that is in tropical cars so if i say
[00:18:34] i don't i wouldn't describe as in tropical cars but what i would say is um yeah hey guys
[00:18:39] checking out your car but now i would say you know you know at the moment if you want to
[00:18:43] play a racing game you you buy you either buy the game or you download the game for free
[00:18:48] and then you're you probably identify a particular car that you're interested in and then you grind
[00:18:52] or you pay within that game to get that car or you complete some achievement to get that car
[00:18:57] and that car is in that war garden of that of that game but this is a new paradigm you buy
[00:19:05] a car like you buy a car in the real world and then you take it to the games and you
[00:19:09] tell a story and you deepen your connection with uh the thing that you've bought because
[00:19:15] it's the constant you know it's like you have your little collection of things that you take
[00:19:18] with you around the world this is this is one of those things and and so they're like oh cool
[00:19:24] get it yeah so you just buy it once and then you can use it everywhere love it so to me
[00:19:28] that that's where this ends um but you can't just flick your fingers and make that happen
[00:19:35] there's a whole load of you know hard work that needs to happen in the middle so okay i
[00:19:39] apologize i shouldn't have had us dancing around like the high uh like the concepts like
[00:19:44] we need to just talk about what the motorverse is in order to continue this conversation so let
[00:19:49] me just ask you straight up what is the motorverse and why should i be excited about it
[00:19:53] so so when i started at anamoka they they basically gave me this um lego set so there's
[00:20:00] a token the rev token a fungible token has been on the market for a while that's tradable
[00:20:05] on ferris slip and exchanges and sorry just to be clear this token is not associated with
[00:20:09] the motorverse it's associated with uh with what oh no so it is so the rev token is a tradable asset
[00:20:17] that is owned by anamoka and it's specifically for um it was it was brought into existence for
[00:20:24] motorsports and racing space i thought that maybe was like the shared governance token of
[00:20:30] like anamoka or something but no this is specifically for the motorverse also so maybe
[00:20:34] a little context around anamoka because anamoka is a uh a company that has this really bold vision to
[00:20:41] democratize basically the internet using web3 um and to that end they've raised lots of money
[00:20:48] and they they have a stake in many many many different projects i think there's 450 different
[00:20:52] projects in the portfolio within that um there are some wholly owned subsidiaries
[00:20:58] and i look after the subsidiaries that relate to motorsports and racing okay um and they have
[00:21:04] multiple different tokens that are associated with different projects themed in different ways they
[00:21:08] might be you know picks and shovels high plays or uh more to do with um you know fashion
[00:21:15] or music um or other types of uh of video games my my area is the racing space so i
[00:21:23] i'm looking at a market of people who identify as motorsports fans or racing gamers and this
[00:21:30] web token is intended um for that for that market but it was it was originally conceived
[00:21:35] around a couple of games so they had a game with uh formula one um which was really really
[00:21:42] successful and i think became more successful than anyone thought it would be um got a little
[00:21:46] bit out of control and they and they closed it down before i joined um but then they had
[00:21:51] another another game called rev racing which is obviously linked to that token and so
[00:21:57] what they were what they were asking me to do is to take this take this token as the kind
[00:22:02] of store of value and the the um the place where we can grow through the network work
[00:22:07] effect of web3 and then build an experience around it using multiple different games and
[00:22:14] relationships to help kind of concentrate the demand for the token and and and create a place
[00:22:21] where these people can hang out and that's what the motorverse is so it's a it's essentially
[00:22:28] the forecourt of the internet that is that is the goal to to basically be a place where when
[00:22:33] a car company makes a real world car they pick up the phone to us and they say hey
[00:22:39] we need to launch a digital version of this and then we um basically mint those cars and
[00:22:45] then they work in multiple different games and experiences and it's all it's it's designed
[00:22:51] to bring this community together who is of like-minded racing racing uh gamers motor sports
[00:22:58] fans and and web3 enthusiasts correct me if i'm wrong but i think what you're saying is like
[00:23:03] the motorverse is maybe this like it's not a game it is the layer under all of these games that
[00:23:09] are gonna like pop out that are based around racing or have some sort of car component
[00:23:14] and the motorverse is the property layer that expresses these cars and these upgrades and
[00:23:19] these wins and losses and that kind of thing yeah so imagine so so it's manifested in a
[00:23:25] website uh motorverse.com which we launched you know a few weeks ago and that is is growing
[00:23:33] slowly into sort of netflix for cars so there's all these different experiences that you can
[00:23:39] take a car and or a bike or whatever and and enjoy and then and at the top there's a
[00:23:44] forecourt where you can go buy cars and then there's your garage where you can you know
[00:23:50] check out different cars and upgrade them dude that is so cool and like i think what's exciting
[00:23:55] about that is the thing i really struggle with with web3 gaming is like so i i'll admit it like
[00:24:02] my head has been melted by world of warcraft for like 15 years um and like there's items
[00:24:08] in there right and like there's things i really care about because like i earned it
[00:24:13] literally 10 years ago when i was in high school or college i guess but the idea that
[00:24:18] i would need to express that as property that exists outside the game like it's hard for me
[00:24:24] to wrap my head around that like why why would my like staff of wisdom be relevant outside of world
[00:24:29] of warcraft but what you're describing here like makes so much sense where like we create
[00:24:35] car like cars exist as a generic concept we allow people to like own them and buy them
[00:24:40] and then the next level is like okay but now we need to create experiences where these things
[00:24:46] that you own are relevant and like do stuff yeah totally i mean this is this is uh this
[00:24:51] comes up a lot right so and i've talked to loads of people you know who i used to work with about
[00:24:57] it around nfts when like at the beginning when i was you know thinking about getting into the
[00:25:01] space so i think you're right i think if you have a staff of wisdom um that's really cool
[00:25:08] and maybe another game can figure out how to make sense of that in their game
[00:25:13] but it seems unlikely because there's a wholly fictional world that's been created
[00:25:18] around like a whole load of different races in this really kind of in an esoteric like awesome
[00:25:25] experience and that to me maybe that gets solved like in the future um but i don't think
[00:25:34] that um those kind of items are appropriate for interoperability whereas a car to me is you know
[00:25:44] there's millions probably hundreds of millions of dollars a year spent making car games that are
[00:25:51] faithful to exactly how they want people how people expect cars to behave in the real world
[00:25:57] right so if i make a game with a portion um i'm doing it for people who like porsches
[00:26:04] and the person who comes and plays the game wants that Porsche to feel as much like a real
[00:26:08] world Porsche as possible so to me the car is a is a perfect place to start when you think about
[00:26:16] interoperability because you're there's a set of metadata around a vehicle that describes
[00:26:22] exactly how it should behave and it should behave that way everywhere now different games
[00:26:28] have different handling models and all this kind of stuff but generally speaking you know
[00:26:34] cars still are they perform relative to one another in the real world and it's possible
[00:26:40] to recreate that in video games and it's already been done so what i mean is like
[00:26:46] if someone says like what's it could someone said this to me the other day like what's the
[00:26:49] equivalent of board apes in in cars we need to come up with the equivalent of board apes
[00:26:54] and my response was well they already exist you know we already there are already you
[00:26:59] know lamborghinis ferraris you know alpines like these cars are that everyone recognizes
[00:27:05] their their household household names there's this expectation of how they're going to perform
[00:27:13] and like you know the brand is really well understood and i think that's really helpful
[00:27:19] because if i make it as a a Porsche so we don't have Porsche enough in our ecosystem
[00:27:25] right now but let's say i make a Porsche it's very easy for me to brief a team to
[00:27:31] deliver an experience that is faithful to Porsche whereas if it's a staff of wisdom i'm like hey
[00:27:37] put this in your game this is what it does in world of warcraft but i guess you know you need
[00:27:42] to make sense of that against your swords it doesn't work yeah and we don't need to get
[00:27:47] into this but like it doesn't even make sense for the business standpoint of anyone like if
[00:27:53] i'm world of warcraft why would i want people to like leave my ecosystem with like i want them i
[00:27:59] want to capture them in and if i'm this new game like why would i want that why would i
[00:28:04] want blizzard to be able to capture the payment and not like just create my own staff of
[00:28:09] wisdom but i think um so i think that goes back to the last conversation about like grafting
[00:28:15] web three things onto web two games just like it literally doesn't make sense um but i
[00:28:20] really and sorry to be pandemic or sorry to really focus on this but i want to pick a part
[00:28:25] like why cars are perfect and there's a couple things you said here so tell me like why what
[00:28:30] you really believe in is it that cars already exist in the real world and have these like
[00:28:36] real world connotations and so they like are a better candidate for this kind of thing
[00:28:43] or is it really about cars are a very interoperable game asset that have applications
[00:28:49] across like so many different things that um it makes sense to start as that as like the
[00:28:55] base asset or maybe a little bit of both definitely both um but there's a third there's a third
[00:29:00] element here which is that for for really quite a long time already cars and games have been
[00:29:07] photorealistic because they're less complicated than an octopus or something right so if you
[00:29:13] make if you make a car and put it in the game and you're using like you know unity or a real
[00:29:19] engine it looks like a real car so to me that's really valuable because it's not it's no longer
[00:29:24] just about the the gamers so if i let's say i don't play video games but i really like um
[00:29:34] ferraris i can i can look at an asset of a ferrari on a in a 3d render on a website or in
[00:29:42] an engine and i can appreciate it and and i sense the value in it and that means that the
[00:29:49] car brands so you got these aspirational car brands with these amazing cars that are super
[00:29:54] expensive um and very few people get to even drive on it you know um and now this is a new
[00:30:03] way to like widen their funnel so this is a way for people to experience true ownership of a
[00:30:11] ferrari or a Porsche or Ford or whatever in a way that they wouldn't necessarily been able to
[00:30:17] in the real world and they can have that because it's interoperable and it's it's moving
[00:30:22] with them rather than kept in a single walled garden they can have this experience with it
[00:30:29] and take it with them as a belonging and show it to their friends on their phone
[00:30:33] and deepen their um connection with the car like you know if you have a car i don't know
[00:30:39] if you have a car but um you you kind of develop there's stories that you that you have memories
[00:30:46] that you associate um with the car because it's been with you to different places you're going
[00:30:51] to road trip or you know you took it for a track day um all this stuff and i'm i'm looking
[00:30:57] to recreate that experience but online very cool so let's talk a little bit about like
[00:31:04] the layer above the motorverse like the games and i would love like maybe if you could
[00:31:08] give us just brief descriptions of the games that are like available now and like less interested
[00:31:12] in talking about gameplay and more interested in talking about the dynamics that come from this
[00:31:17] interoperable ecosystem so like how can my actions in one game like have implications for
[00:31:25] other games or for like my non-game motorverse world like describe to me a little bit about
[00:31:31] how you're thinking about creating this like ecosystem that is like constantly cycling and
[00:31:36] creating value we've got a bunch of games that are live so um depending on like uh how you count
[00:31:44] them and whether you include things in the pipeline it's it's basically 10 different games
[00:31:52] and there is a mixture of their existing web 2 games that have been live that we don't want
[00:31:57] to try and shoot one web 3 and 2 and then there are web 3 games that are relatively you
[00:32:04] know nascently you know they've got thousands of users versus millions of users in our web 2 games
[00:32:10] and then you have we're building now we've just launched this game it's in early access talk
[00:32:15] drift 2 for mars studio in melbourne grease monkey games and that's that's a triple a
[00:32:21] racing game that can accept pretty much any kind of vehicle that's built in on with engine
[00:32:26] 5 it's photorealistic it's had like 400 000 downloads so that's the direction that
[00:32:31] we're heading in terms of experience but to make this ecosystem work we need to have the
[00:32:38] vehicle brands come on the journey with us we need to have studios come with us on the journey
[00:32:42] we need to have the users so the way that i think about it is if we talked a bit before
[00:32:49] about like what's the long-term goal mass market is easy to understand you buy a car
[00:32:53] it works in other games okay but how do we how do we get there we get there by talking to
[00:33:00] vehicle brands and having them come aboard with the idea that we're going to basically mint
[00:33:05] their cars and guarantee that they sell out because they work in more than one game
[00:33:14] then they look beautiful and they've got this amazing brand behind them but also we've built
[00:33:19] this standard that allows other studios to come in and build games and those cars will now
[00:33:26] work in their games too and that's really important because what that does is
[00:33:31] for those studios it solves for user acquisition so imagine you've got a million people that own
[00:33:39] that are holders of these car assets and then as a studio i make a game that supports
[00:33:47] those assets all of those users are engaged they're interested they've spent money on these
[00:33:52] they obviously like the space and the concept of it they all receive a notification through the
[00:33:56] motorists telling them their car now works somewhere else aka they can go drive somewhere
[00:34:01] new so we're expecting a lot of those people to come into those those games so that solves
[00:34:07] for user acquisitions is one of the most challenging things that studios have to deal
[00:34:12] with after they make a game like there's loads of examples of amazing games that nobody
[00:34:16] knows about or fail because they don't get enough people coming into them coming into them but then
[00:34:22] we also have the way that we're doing the licensing means that we solved for licensing
[00:34:27] as well so these that's another thing that these studios struggle with is that they
[00:34:32] they want to obviously have all the cars in their game but each of the each of the car
[00:34:36] brands requires you know various different lengths of contractual dance and minimum
[00:34:43] guarantee payments and stuff in order for them to be allowed to use the assets so it's a very
[00:34:48] attractive option for these for these external studios for to come and build against the
[00:34:54] motorverse standard and then also all of those different studios get a cut of the
[00:35:01] sales of the central supply of car so there's a sort of affiliate model so if they let's
[00:35:06] say we're trying to sell 100 000 of a particular model everyone gets to try and sell
[00:35:12] that supply so this creates an ecosystem where people get very good at selling cars basically
[00:35:20] because there's a sort of competition to sell them so that's so that's why the studios
[00:35:24] get involved is they get they get access to these vehicles and the users the brands
[00:35:29] get involved because you know there's lots of examples of brands that have sold car NFTs and
[00:35:35] then people complain there's nothing to do with them and this is a this is a problem
[00:35:39] and we're solving for that the long-term use cases that people mass market come and buy them
[00:35:46] and they work everywhere and in the short term we're using our network of web three communities
[00:35:52] across these 450 different projects at Animoca to bring web three folk who already understand
[00:35:59] you know the concept of interoperability and can see the vision and believe in it
[00:36:04] to get involved and we invite them to the platform to join and to stake rev
[00:36:09] and earn sort of loyalty points effectively and that in its set that drives the adoption
[00:36:18] of the that basically drives the market for the sale of the cards but it also applies pressure
[00:36:24] to the token price and the token price of rev is really important to us because it's our
[00:36:29] store of value and it's how we reward our early adopters and it allows us to do things
[00:36:35] interesting things like we can we can do token swaps with other motorsports projects
[00:36:40] and then airdrop tokens from those projects onto our users to and our stake is to reward
[00:36:46] them for taking part and so this growth engine allows us and combined with the the
[00:36:51] communities from all of the other Animoca portfolio companies it allows us to basically
[00:36:57] drive the demand for the for the cards get the word out have more and more interesting projects
[00:37:03] and you know with 10 projects already and more on the way fairly quickly you end up in a
[00:37:08] situation where there's a huge variety of choice fairly kind of complete portfolio of
[00:37:14] different motorsports and racing experiences that would be attractive to anyone who's even
[00:37:20] remotely interested in the space. Yeah I mean I think the most important thing to cue on
[00:37:24] to what you just said is specifically about this system allows game studios access to
[00:37:32] like actual brand name assets of multinational corporations that have more lawyers than people
[00:37:38] you've ever met in your life like kind of out of the box and I just the the idea that like
[00:37:46] I could go get like four of my developer friends and we could spin up a game that is
[00:37:51] literally at this point now comparable to something like Forza or one of like the AAA game
[00:37:56] studios because like look man the technology we're all capable of it like welcome to the
[00:38:00] future the thing that we're not all capable of is brand deals but that's kind of what you're
[00:38:06] solving for not necessarily on the consumer level which you are but more importantly you're
[00:38:10] solving it on like the developer level. Yeah I mean it's it's complicated and you know
[00:38:15] there's different vehicle brands have different sort of levels of appetite so you have some who
[00:38:21] are like really excited about being the first to be in this space and experiment and learn
[00:38:27] and then there's some who are like we'll just wait and see what happens and join later but
[00:38:33] we have managed to secure some really really kind of keystone type partners that are like
[00:38:39] will hopefully lead the way you know often if you look at the trends in the automotive
[00:38:43] industry you see that you know there's a few different brands that always are always trying
[00:38:48] new and exciting things and those are the ones that we have gone after and you know they're
[00:38:54] pretty open-minded too I mean I think their biggest concerns are around like the misuse of
[00:38:58] their IP so we have to have a lot of like approval processes and stuff but that's something
[00:39:03] that we're absorbing on our side and it's and it's also you know just it's not an
[00:39:09] extra cost it's not like they want to charge per game they they the deal is with the motorverse
[00:39:15] and they take a they take a revenue share from the sale at the NFT cars that's where their
[00:39:21] upside is in for the for the brands but also being relevant to the new audience and bringing
[00:39:27] this new type of ownership it's what it's like if you think about like everyone who wants to
[00:39:32] own an amazing sports car it's a lot of people and then like how many people actually
[00:39:37] end up buying one and then there's this extra step in the middle now where you can maybe own
[00:39:42] a digital one for a few years and then this this is a kind of standard kind of sales technique
[00:39:47] right um they're probably going to end up in getting selling more real supercars in the real
[00:39:54] life yeah and look like if people are skeptical here that like like I can understand the
[00:40:00] pushback that like okay the distance between a affordable NFT and like a multi- like quarter
[00:40:06] million dollar Ferrari is just like so large that like you're kind of talking out your ass here
[00:40:12] but I think that's wrong and I think the right way to look at this is like there's a reason
[00:40:17] that Ferrari's merchandise brand is bigger than the car and that's because like people really
[00:40:23] identify with this stuff they care about it they buy stuff they participate with it even
[00:40:28] if they can't reach like the like huge huge dollar amount level and so like you don't
[00:40:34] really have to convince me like all of these car companies have spent decades convincing me
[00:40:39] that this is the right play um just through selling like Mercedes jackets and Porsche
[00:40:44] keychains and like dot dot dot totally totally and you know like it's an education piece so
[00:40:50] we spend a lot of time talking to these different brands and you know and also they
[00:40:55] come up with cool ideas too you know like some of them are like well hang on a minute
[00:40:59] we could actually drive sales in the real world this way so like maybe that should be
[00:41:03] part of the deal so like if we if we can send new leads to them and there's people showing up
[00:41:10] at their factory in real life like showing their digital car like so there are conversations like
[00:41:15] that like maybe there's a discount or something cool so I want to take us out of brand world
[00:41:19] and go back to um like the power of interoperability for games and I want to
[00:41:25] look at the downsides a little bit so like there's so much awesome about interoperability
[00:41:30] but like the flip side of that is like let's say that you know rec studios comes out with
[00:41:35] this like brand new game and it's a multiplayer game and like I want it to be like competitive
[00:41:42] but because will went and bought like the Bugatti supercar um like over in this world
[00:41:49] and like has all these assets like he can show up to this game and just like completely
[00:41:53] dominate and so I guess my question for you is like how do you design games that
[00:41:58] like take into account the fact that there's progress outside of the games that don't completely
[00:42:04] break gameplay um well I mean I think in that's another reason that cars are awesome because you
[00:42:10] you know in the real world this is how it works right like if you if you have a better
[00:42:15] car you're faster now and that is more expensive but normally it that doesn't mean that you're
[00:42:21] not skillful like normally the way that that's handled is you just have different classes
[00:42:25] of race or you you know so you feel like oh this race is about um you know lamborghinis only or
[00:42:31] this is a like you're allowed to have any level of modding or you have to have the most base car
[00:42:37] and it's it's the same car for everyone and then we just see who the best driver is
[00:42:41] so that's how I think about it I mean like most video games that have cars in allow you
[00:42:46] to upgrade the cars throughout the game through one way or another so um and there's
[00:42:52] an incentive to do that because you want to get better so you're either investing time or money
[00:42:58] to to get ahead I think the difference is like you know whether it's genuinely unfair and it's
[00:43:04] pay to win which is not really what we're you know this concept of pay to win I was
[00:43:09] going to drive you right there yeah okay so so there's this idea in it comes up a lot
[00:43:14] like so imagine when you if you were designing a free-to-play game from scratch you'd be like
[00:43:19] oh cool I'm gonna make this cool game about cars and there's going to be like um this mode
[00:43:24] where you can pay an extra hundred dollars in your cars like way faster than everyone else's
[00:43:29] this is not fair or fun um some games have experimented with it and there are like
[00:43:34] techniques where you have like deep levels of engagement that open up like so you feel like
[00:43:40] you've achieved as a player so everyone like kind of respects you because you've you've
[00:43:43] done that so I think that it's totally manageable pay to win is not what this is about this is about
[00:43:50] having an awesome car which you can take to different places so like if you want to level
[00:43:53] the playing field in a game you can do that at the flick of a switch you can like anyone who
[00:43:58] owns this particular class of car can come and run in this race and any mods won't take
[00:44:02] back yeah totally man I think what you're saying is that like it is up to the game designers
[00:44:10] to develop good games and that has always been the case like whether or not there's like
[00:44:14] financial incentives or like pay-to-win like mechanisms or whatever like it is up to game
[00:44:19] designers to build good games and like yeah maybe you're changing the dynamics a little
[00:44:24] bit by allowing outside assets to come into the game but like design a better game and
[00:44:30] like the beauty of cars as like where we're like you know building our nucleus on how
[00:44:36] we're going to solve web 3 gaming is that like cars have this property that is like about
[00:44:42] identity and like how people perceive themselves that is like completely divorced from gameplay
[00:44:50] and so like you can kind of build relationships with customers on that access while not like
[00:44:58] really like having to contour or screw up the gameplay access yeah it's there's interesting
[00:45:04] there's a lot of interesting conversations around how can you so imagine you really love cars and
[00:45:11] you own this car and your hobby on the weekend is to go into your garage and like tinker with it
[00:45:16] and add you know whatever cosmetic stuff or change the performance of the car like how do we
[00:45:22] create that in our world and there are some really interesting ways that these designers who
[00:45:30] have been making car games for ages like I was talking about earlier that they've now got
[00:45:34] this extra like tool set so basically you can you can make design decisions that are kind
[00:45:41] of permanent decisions in your car that affect like you would you know if you like use an
[00:45:46] axle grinder to like reduce the weight or something you know what I mean like so there's
[00:45:49] a there's this there's this thing there and there's also this concept of tuning chips so in
[00:45:56] cars you there's like this computerized chip that optimizes you know how much fuel is used
[00:46:03] all the rest of it and that's a real like in the real world there's a real skill set around that
[00:46:08] so longer term I put the move it's not going to be live for a while but one of my goals is to
[00:46:14] kind of if you understand how cars work in the real world I want you to be able to take them
[00:46:20] and do that in the motorverse and you know be able to optimize things and then maybe you
[00:46:24] like hash your things and no one knows what you've done on the inside but you're then
[00:46:28] able to sell this tuning chip to people that means that they can stick it in their car and
[00:46:32] it performs differently so there's a whole kind of meta game around that outside of the
[00:46:39] the games themselves yeah man that's like that is so wild that I don't even know how to address
[00:46:44] it because like my question to you is like okay as a game studio like can I make not a game but
[00:46:52] a tuning shop application that can like maybe like get better results than people modding at home and
[00:46:59] like that can be a whole business built on this platform that actually isn't even a game
[00:47:03] yeah absolutely so the I mean we think about it often because we have games and we have this
[00:47:10] idea that we're bringing out of games we think about it as you know in the context of video
[00:47:15] games but it doesn't have to be you could just in theory create really good shop for cars
[00:47:20] that allows you to do that or it's just very you're all about trying to sell down on the
[00:47:25] central supply you know so I just want it to be an open ecosystem where multiple different
[00:47:32] experiences make sense there's no kind of rules it's not like oh this isn't a game
[00:47:37] therefore we don't want to include it it's like oh this is I want to encourage innovation
[00:47:42] and so this is another thing so it's not like it's not intended to be subscription
[00:47:48] or anything like that so it's not to game pass for example I hope I get this right this is my
[00:47:53] understanding of game pass so like if it's slightly wrong then apologies Microsoft but they
[00:47:59] you know they bring games into their subscription they'll pay the games
[00:48:04] some sort of fee to the range and upfront fee for the game to publish in game pass
[00:48:09] and then depending on how well the game performs in terms of active users and time spent
[00:48:15] in that ecosystem they can get extra bonus money each month okay but the problem is first of all
[00:48:24] you need to manage all that data centrally and there's this overhead that's associated with it
[00:48:30] but also the the two metrics that they focus on the last time I checked were active users
[00:48:36] and time spent now that seems like a good that that's probably a pretty good approximation
[00:48:43] but you're kind of forcing the hand of developers and designers so they they're now thinking now
[00:48:50] how do I get that bonus money I'm going to have to have an appointment mechanic that brings
[00:48:54] people back every day so they have many active users now making a good game doesn't necessarily
[00:49:01] mean that you that's a good idea so I just want to create this place where now you support
[00:49:08] the car when this driver turns up in your in your experience it's over to you how are you
[00:49:14] like what do you want them to do do you want them to come once and spend a million dollars
[00:49:19] or do you want them to pay nothing for months while they have loads of fun and then
[00:49:23] sell upgrades to them like when they you know when they're really meaningful
[00:49:27] do you want to have your own subscription do you want to just pay people at the front door
[00:49:32] or make people pay at the front door to get in or do you want to have you know races that
[00:49:37] you enter and you can like you know wager the outcome between you know all these all these
[00:49:42] models are fine awesome and I think that's like the point of crypto is like you create robust
[00:49:47] systems and you make them permissionless and you let like anyone just like cook you know and
[00:49:52] like come up with what they want and and like their vision so totally on board with that
[00:49:56] I think we have only approximately 10 minutes left here so I want to make sure that we hit
[00:50:01] the last big things which are one I need to understand like really how the rev token
[00:50:07] fits into this um like I want to know as a let's say I just am a gamer who is interested in
[00:50:14] playing all these games I don't really care about car collectibles is the rev token relevant
[00:50:18] to me let's say I'm a collector and I don't care about games is the rev token relevant to
[00:50:22] me if I'm a developer is the rev token relevant to me help me understrive like what the token
[00:50:27] is and how it ties together the ecosystem and then just so you know the last question I need
[00:50:33] to ask you about is tell us a little bit about um the torque drift too and like why that is
[00:50:39] exciting and like why is that something that ultimately the audience as soon as they're done
[00:50:43] listening needs to go uh start thinking about but first let's talk about the rev token yeah so
[00:50:48] that the rev token is our store of value I've talked about it before um and it's also a way
[00:50:54] that we engage with our community so we've we've just as I mentioned we just relaunched the brand
[00:50:59] of the motor bus and we've got a discord and everything go check it out um and we're going
[00:51:03] to start basically allowing people who hold rev tokens take part in in votes on directions
[00:51:09] that we might take the ecosystem so this could be like a crypto thing it could be deciding
[00:51:14] about which brands we go after that kind of stuff so from a participation point of view
[00:51:19] that's important we also believe that it will increase in value based on all of the work that
[00:51:24] we're putting into it so we you know that's you know it's not financial advice but that's what
[00:51:27] that's one of the main things that we're all working towards um and so you know it's a good
[00:51:32] opportunity for people to get in and um and you can if you buy it and stake it inside our
[00:51:37] ecosystem then we'll reward you with uh points and loyalty and there's so many different
[00:51:43] experiences that we uh bringing together so it's not just digital things it's also
[00:51:48] um you know the in real life that we have a relationship with MotoGP so we're able to offer
[00:51:54] VIP experiences with MotoGP we work with lots of different tracks and all this kind of stuff so
[00:51:58] there's a lot there's a there's a lot to there's a lot of stuff um that you can give away off
[00:52:03] the back of that but for me there's a it's really neat as a way of exchanging value inside
[00:52:10] the ecosystem so like if I'm like if i'm running a part shop i can start taking payment
[00:52:14] in rev and we've got all this stuff set up so this is really cool um and just generally
[00:52:20] the price of it helps us as a team so focus on the kind of the north star of you know
[00:52:27] it's our kind of metric for seeing how the whole thing grows and also we're able to take it
[00:52:32] to other partnerships so we have like four or five different people that we're talking to who
[00:52:38] who have their own token in you know whether it's a motorsports project or a particular
[00:52:44] vehicle brand and we're able to do swaps with them so this helps us kind of grow together
[00:52:52] so that all these people who have taken bets in the web3 space we can create this sort of
[00:52:56] connective motors is the basically the home of all the motorsports tokens is what how I think
[00:53:01] about it so what does success look like well in a few years time obviously we hope the price
[00:53:07] has gone up but we'll have lots of different other motorsports tokens in our treasury and
[00:53:11] a lot of connective tissue between all these communities and that's one of the things that
[00:53:15] web3 is so good for is that you know everyone talks about community like in any kind of uh
[00:53:21] you know any kind of initiative but here when people have something that they can own buy sell
[00:53:29] watch appreciate share with their friends people tend to engage more deeply and so it's
[00:53:34] you have this much much more kind of um this richer community experience basically
[00:53:41] where people are you know sharing in the upside of the of the project and everyone becomes an
[00:53:46] evangelist for it and without the red token I mean you can still attempt this this project
[00:53:52] but I think it it's the thing that unites us all and you know I literally until this moment
[00:53:58] I have never once heard of a token swap that I thought made sense but like this is it right
[00:54:03] and it's because it's not like something about the treasuries of the two projects but
[00:54:08] it is allowing like the rev token in the ecosystem to like just be an ecosystem and I can totally
[00:54:16] imagine like let's say I own a Porsche and like I like this one game that's why I bought
[00:54:21] the Porsche I only play that but then I find out that through rev staking or maybe just as
[00:54:26] a giveaway for owning Porsche or whatever like this other project with this token like sends
[00:54:32] me something and I'm like okay interesting like what what's going on here and that's
[00:54:37] like just something that would never ever happen in web 2 gaming like the idea it is there's no
[00:54:43] analogy there's no analogy and so um super interested so super interesting how the rev
[00:54:49] token like acts as almost like a fiber that knits the community together on the player
[00:54:56] collector side I'm wondering does that does the rev token have any implications on the
[00:55:00] developer side like for example do you let's say require them to stake x amount in order to
[00:55:07] participate with these nfts or to like link into the motoverse chain or is there any sort of
[00:55:14] um way that like developers are formally engaging with the rev token yeah absolutely so we
[00:55:22] with our with our um subsidiary studios we look to incentivize all of them with the token
[00:55:27] because they're you know they're really just part of the team but yeah like we're
[00:55:31] want we're exploring a lot of different models so one of the things you know as I said at
[00:55:37] the beginning is we don't want to try and shoehorn something in like too early so
[00:55:44] transparently we're doing this um the first interoperable car launch will happen for our
[00:55:50] ecosystem with this really it's a really awesome brand in the next few months and that's just very
[00:55:57] exciting anyway but the whole there's a whole as we've been through this process with all these
[00:56:02] different studios building their this into their games to support it we've started to sort of
[00:56:07] uncover like you understand the cost of doing that trying to work out what the right model
[00:56:12] for them to for this to work we're really lucky because we've got these internal studios so
[00:56:17] we can be funding them and we can like test it out work out the total value that's available
[00:56:23] and understanding the challenges around building the models for the games so one of so some of
[00:56:28] the ideas we've got are things like we talked about the affiliate model like if they're
[00:56:33] generating sales they'll get uh they'll will pay them in rev all of the cars are sold in rev
[00:56:39] centrally um so that's the if you want to buy one of these things you've got to buy rev
[00:56:44] to buy it um but then we're thinking like if a studio has built the models for a car
[00:56:50] we can put that in a in a place where other people can get access to those models to speed
[00:56:56] up the development on their in their studios by basically paying the other studio that did the
[00:57:00] original asset in rep so there's there's a lot of basically all that kind of stuff is
[00:57:06] emerging and we're understanding the different requirements and the different kind of ebbs and
[00:57:11] flows of when money is needed in the process for development and the kinds of risks that we'd be
[00:57:17] asking people to take at different points in their development cycle and those that's the
[00:57:22] kind of devil in the detail but the brilliant news is is that you know rev is a very easy
[00:57:27] way for us to like transfer value and as we go the whole kind of tide should rise with it so
[00:57:32] a lot of our partners very happy to take payment in rev because they know that the plan
[00:57:37] yeah yeah you're not it's not like basically a promise an empty promise it's something with
[00:57:42] real economic value and i think like the real interesting thing to to notice if you're like
[00:57:48] an entrepreneur or thinking about how to build in this space is like you guys have you know
[00:57:54] that there needs to be some sort of dynamic between the substrate layer the motorverse and
[00:58:00] the game studios but you're not sure what it is and instead of enforcing stuff that might
[00:58:04] be like prohibitory or like causes people to go run away or whatever like instead you have this
[00:58:10] model where you own the first game studios you can experiment with them you can figure out what
[00:58:16] works like organically and then finally once you figure it out you can turn it to the
[00:58:21] external partners and say this is how our system works yeah totally um but that doesn't
[00:58:27] mean we're not talking to external partners already we are but you know it's it is a
[00:58:31] work in progress for sure for sure for sure okay last thing let's talk about torque drift 2 so like
[00:58:37] first of all just give us the elevator pitch like what's the game why is it exciting and then
[00:58:42] um yeah well let's pull together all the themes and the big things we talked about to say
[00:58:46] like how torque drift 2 like really represents this whole new era of i don't even want to
[00:58:52] call it gaming anymore it's somewhere between gaming and collecting and just self-identity
[00:58:59] yeah uh okay so torque drift 2 is like it's really cool so the studio that makes it is
[00:59:04] run by Aaron and Billy over in Melbourne it's called grease monkey games and these guys are
[00:59:11] they've gone like full native in the space so it's a game about drift racing but these
[00:59:17] guys have their own drift cars most of the team enjoys drifting in their spare time so
[00:59:22] the weekend they finish like developing and then they go and drive 45 minutes away to this track
[00:59:28] and spend the weekend drifting so this is so it's being made with passion by these guys and
[00:59:33] that they're very talented team they're using umbil engine 5 which i'm not sure if you're
[00:59:38] familiar with but it's the sort of gold standard for graphics at this point and so
[00:59:43] it looks incredible it's in early access which basically means that it's you know it's
[00:59:49] kind of like a test but an open test so there's lots of people using it we've had about
[00:59:53] 400 000 people through it and it's the first AAA racing game in web 3 and it's free to play
[01:00:01] so you know they're trying to do a lot at the same time so um yeah and they've recently i mean
[01:00:07] they've got amazing deals with amazing brands already these are not yet interoperable but
[01:00:13] they're working with Nissan and Honda and Toyota and a few others and i know what their
[01:00:18] pipeline is and it's very exciting and we're starting to we're working with some of the
[01:00:24] brands exploring them how we how we make these things interoperable and they they've just
[01:00:30] launched this big update so essentially now the game has a whole new mode called freestyle
[01:00:40] which is like you know basically it's a playground where you once you've learned how
[01:00:45] to drift you can do all these tricks and stuff there's like different um i think it's called a
[01:00:50] wall tap where you kind of you go past the wall and you just give it a nudge kind of a
[01:00:54] relative low speed but the wheels are all spinning um it's it's cool there's a lot
[01:00:58] of content out there you should go check it out it's on the epic game store it's got a
[01:01:03] it's got a whole it's got sim rig support there's um yeah i mean there's not much to
[01:01:09] dislike about it other than um it's just not it's not completely finished yet i think the
[01:01:16] full game will be live in q4 but there's a lot of people having a lot of fun in there
[01:01:21] and there are so you can buy web 2 assets in there which just you know if you want to play
[01:01:28] it like a normal free-to-play player you can do that but you can also buy nft versions of the
[01:01:32] cars um and it's and we're slowly and those cards you can buy with rev at a discount
[01:01:38] and we're slowly work we're kind of picking our way through how do we make sense the theater
[01:01:43] this large audience of web 2 type players and we've got this goal to bring other people in
[01:01:49] who are buying interoperable cars into the ecosystem so it's about how do we have someone
[01:01:53] driving around in a web 2 car and look over and see a web 3 car and how do they know that
[01:01:58] they're looking at that and why is that awesome and i this is a sort of education
[01:02:03] piece that we're doing well why why do you need to sell like a web 2 version and an nft version
[01:02:10] why can't it just be like i buy this car and i don't even know what it is on the back end but
[01:02:15] every single time you're going to issue nft and i'm only going to realize that if
[01:02:19] i go into the menu to export car uh it's there's a mixture of different reasons so
[01:02:24] that the web 2 part is very well understood so it's easy we know we can very predictably
[01:02:29] generate revenue from that and it's important that these studios you know we actually want to
[01:02:33] make money as well and so we so we so we have that that experience where which is very kind of
[01:02:40] well understood and that's what a large proportion of people coming into the game experience
[01:02:45] and then the nft part is more of a kind of education piece so when you go to buy a car
[01:02:50] you go okay i can buy i can buy this car for like 10 bucks blah blah or i can buy the
[01:02:56] nft version of it which is actually tradable and i can own outside of the game and maybe we'll work
[01:03:02] in other games in the future and that's quite a that's quite a big leap for some people and
[01:03:08] nfts are you know there's definitely um we had a lot of backlash when we launched around
[01:03:13] having nfts in the game which i understand i mean like it's a totally new thing and nfts
[01:03:17] like you said that um i don't know if it was before we press record but we're talking about
[01:03:24] how there are a lot of people in you know who've had bad experiences in in crypto and you know so
[01:03:31] the nfts are a bit of a kind of you know a bit of a swear word for some people but i totally
[01:03:35] get that so it's for me it's about you know forget about the technology and we talk people
[01:03:42] talk about this a lot but it's like i hope in a year's time or maybe two years time people
[01:03:48] won't be asking about whether it's an nft or not they just will expect that it works in
[01:03:52] multiple places it's kind of like saying hey we've made this amazing game on aws you should check
[01:03:57] it out like it's just kind of irrelevant to the to the to the audience no i i think that's a fair
[01:04:02] point and like maybe in a world without sam bankman fried or a lot of things that have
[01:04:07] happened in this industry like we're not even having this conversation all you see is the button
[01:04:11] to buy a car and then that also appears in your motiverse account and like but yeah people
[01:04:17] do have allergies to crypto and uh that's just something we have to deal with and honestly
[01:04:21] it's something that we deserve yeah and i guess i guess the other thing so i didn't fully answer
[01:04:26] your questions the other thing is around the um you know why not just have it all in the
[01:04:30] back end and they can discover it like as they go through the game and i would really like to
[01:04:35] to be there and we talk about that a lot but there are there's infrastructure and cost around
[01:04:40] and gas fees and all this kind of stuff around the stuff so if you do it at scale so
[01:04:44] if you have 400 000 people come through your game and they all buy these assets and there's
[01:04:49] there's this thing going on the background they don't understand it's costing you money
[01:04:53] and they never leverage it but it's the good news is it's easy to do like as soon as they
[01:04:57] get it like we can make it happen so like inside the game we can be like oh okay i want
[01:05:01] to make this an nft cool so off you go and um it's more like that all right last question
[01:05:07] to walk us out on so i i'm gonna cut myself at the knees here and already say i obviously
[01:05:14] the answer is both but taking both off the table like in the do you see this more like which way do
[01:05:23] you see users flowing do you see users saying like holy crap this is like a really cool game like
[01:05:28] i want to i just want to buy this game because it's cool and then oh wow there's nfts and oh
[01:05:33] wow there's a whole motorverse and now i'm like go from these triple a games into the
[01:05:38] motorverse or do you foresee this more the other way which is people come to the motorverse
[01:05:43] people are interested in collecting and then notice like oh my god there's all these different
[01:05:47] games and different like venues for me to use these collectibles i know the answer is both but
[01:05:52] um if you had to be pinned down to one like how do you really like understand the dynamic
[01:05:58] um as we like go through the growth phase of both crypto and crypto gaming so i think that
[01:06:04] you know because we can make these games that we know we know appeal already to the mass
[01:06:11] market i don't want to stop doing that because this is you mean this is great and that's all
[01:06:18] the guys love doing and they're really good at it and it's really fun and it's awesome and
[01:06:22] it would be wonderful if they all immediately went to the motorverse and got it and it was
[01:06:26] all brilliant amazing but one of the things that so we organize ourselves um around um like
[01:06:34] there's a central team that's building the motorverse website doing all the thinking
[01:06:38] around the economy and you know how we integrate the games into that and then we have the studios
[01:06:44] and we all meet together but the studios are working on their games and they have common
[01:06:47] problems so we work with them and one of the goals of the studios is to try and
[01:06:54] try out lots of different things in our games to get web two people into web three right so
[01:06:59] this is one of their big things is like if you can if you can send people to the motor
[01:07:04] we're really really happy like if you can find a way to do that sustainably from your web two audience
[01:07:08] but that's not to say that i expect a lot of web three native people to come into the motorverse
[01:07:14] itself and then go the other way because they're coming in for a different reason you know
[01:07:17] they're coming in because they want to read the story and believe in their vision and stake
[01:07:21] rev and then the get and then they've got loads of cool games to play while they're
[01:07:26] while they're at it so it's definitely both i mean i'll add for the motorverse itself
[01:07:32] the and which is which is you know the big push at the moment are we're leaning into the web three
[01:07:38] communities to to basically bring as many people from those communities because we think they'll
[01:07:45] understand it better but those aren't necessarily exactly the same people who are playing these
[01:07:50] games on epic store that we're that we're publishing so it's a it's a it's both and i
[01:07:56] guess as we go we'll be like oh these guys are now turning into racing gamers and these
[01:08:01] racing gamers are turning into people who are interested in the interoperability piece so
[01:08:06] yeah no man and of course the answer is both but like the answer is both in like the most
[01:08:12] positive way because if we're talking about users finding the games and then being onboarded into
[01:08:17] crypto like congratulations world we just figured out how to get retail in here and if
[01:08:21] we're talking about the other way it's we're finding actual applications for all this speculation
[01:08:28] that we've done over the last 15 years like things that are actually fun and you want to do
[01:08:33] and are not just about buying the next token and so like it doesn't matter which way you
[01:08:38] consider the flow like it is like what this industry needs on both sides cool i'm glad you
[01:08:44] agree it's a it's a very interesting project there's a lot of those are so multi-faceted
[01:08:50] so you know our biggest challenge actually is just focusing on the right things because there's
[01:08:55] so many potential ways we could go in different partners so we're very much in a kind of test and
[01:09:00] learn phase as we go but it's great to get the brand out and have the website live so
[01:09:06] i encourage people to go and look at motorways.com go and check out talk drift
[01:09:10] to have a look at our the roadmap on the motorways and see what's coming
[01:09:13] it's there's plenty there's plenty in store yeah awesome well you kind of uh got ahead of
[01:09:18] me a little bit because i normally i would say uh well thank you so much like this has
[01:09:24] been incredible can you please tell the audience where to find motorverse and find you so let me
[01:09:28] rephrase with audience right now push pause go check out motorverse.com like let's actually
[01:09:34] put some like visuals and some like feeling into all the things we've been talking about
[01:09:39] and then will just man thank you thank you for helping me understand like this promise of
[01:09:44] web3 crypto not only like how it's going to happen but why like why would it happen and
[01:09:50] why is that relevant to both me as a gamer and me as a crypto person and so uh just man i'm
[01:09:58] so excited about what you're doing i'm so excited to see what comes next and you
[01:10:02] kind of sprinkled in like five different alphas in there so we definitely need to have
[01:10:05] you back in the next couple months once those alphas are ready to bloom and talk through like
[01:10:10] what's coming for down the pipeline yeah it's been really fun talking and i enjoyed it and
[01:10:15] i'd be very happy to come back yeah awesome man well i'm looking forward to it and um man
[01:10:20] thank you and have a good rest of your day thanks man