Brian D. Evans on the path to mainstream Web3 gaming adoption

0:00I'm ashon Addison from the cryptocoin show and today on blockchain interviews we have Brian D Evans CEO and founder of bde Ventures Brian welcome to the show and thanks for taking the time hey Ashton how's it going uh yeah great to be here thanks for having me you're very welcome I'm super excited to dive into crypto more specifically the gaming side

0:19of it and a little bit else I know you get around the space and but I feel like to focus in on web 3 gaming for this discussion because the industry for gaming is just so big and much bigger than crypto and there's a merging of these Technologies happening and it's not going to happen overnight but there's definitely a lot of advancements happening in the industry I know you're

0:40well on top of it and I'm excited to get your expertise so thank you so much for coming on the show yeah it's great to be here yeah I um when I first learned about ethereum I was a gamer growing up probably played way too many hours of World of Warcraft and go of Duty and you know the typical games right um and when I learned about ethereum in 2014 pretty

0:59early on I I heard an analogy of metalic backstory of coming from sort of the gaming world and build then going on to build ethereum and I started to see all these similarities between games and and smart contracts and ethereum and and blockchains in general um so it definitely pequ my curiosity and uh I kind of dug down the rabbit hole of uh learning you know what's possible sort

1:21of in this you know how how blockchain basically and gaming could could uh combine and then you know games take a long time to build right so it took many many years to see some you know AAA quality Games come out of the blockchain space um the first kind of games we saw were very basic um and then now we're starting to see more advanced games they call it triple you know AAA basically

1:42refers to studio built games um that's you know a Sony or somebody would build that kind of quality um we yeah so it's it's an exciting space for sure and there's there's a lot of reasons why it just makes sense you know no I completely agree and I'm also a former gamer as well and um it's F you mention World of Warcraft there I think I don't recall the exact story but I remember

2:06you know something happened to vitalic beran's World of Warcraft character and that was that was the reason that he actually built ethereum was um they took something from his character and he said hey you know what I'm going to build my own blockchain to change the entire world um because of this so that's hilarious yeah I believe it was like an analogy he gave about they nerfed his

2:24his warlock spell or something warlock spell and and uh he got pissed basically and went on to to at ethereum but if you look at so here's the thing um if you look at e if you look at ethereum for instance right the smart contract itself very similar to to a game world right where it's got a set of rules and you can sort of do things within this world

2:44um just the gold in the game very much like ether and um even the nft is very much like in-game assets so there's all these similarities um and it just makes sense if you think about here here's something interesting if you think about the evolution of games right this point in time where blockchains and ownership are relevant there's a very specific

3:02reason for that on top on top of the technology just happening to sort of fit um you know we started when I was a kid you know um I played uh Mario Brothers right and um it was a that's a called a Clos Loop game you basically play for a while you die you lose game over okay you're gonna go get some dinner or something right um then they said well let's just make the games go on you know

3:24forever right and then this became like internet games basically and eventually games like candy CR and you know games you could just kind of loop the levels basically forever so people would just keep playing and then that led to people buying things in games and then they said okay well let's go you know go even further then you got these you know um

3:44you know massively MMO RPG games and and Call of Duties where you could play friends all over the world in these 3D environments that now look so realistic and what happens is and you you said you were a Warcraft player as well so you definitely get this part as you invest so much time and energy into these games right so naturally you know what would happen you know I noticed

4:06this as well can't do anything with your character if you stop playing you know it's it's like it's it's it's uh not allowed to to sell your character right they they'll just ban the account and you know gold selling in these games is highly you know criticized and not supported um for the most part and um so that's kind of where we come from and it

4:27fits in perfectly with uh people investing so much time into these games that they want to own something right they say well cuz cuz you know in the the counterargument against web 3 gaming is nobody wants s anything and it's like you know well but no one's also out there saying you know blizzard should I hope blizzard makes extra 100 million this year you know the players are

4:47definitely not saying that either right um so it's just a natural evolution of of player agency and people spending so much time customizing their characters investing time into these games that they want to own the assets and we're seeing it you know parts of Asia for instance you're you're seeing a huge adoption Anoka Brands and others there's there's even entire blockchain gaming

5:07alliances being formed with with some of these big players even the even the big game studios I've got friends and we're bu we're building a web 3 game and and I've got friends from from various web 3 game studios and they all have plans so in my view what's going to happen possibly what could happen one possibility is you get a chat GTP effect right you get a Smash Hit Breakout game

5:29come along that you know gets millions of players overnight and it uses the blockchain elements doesn't mean that it'll have you know crypto in the in the in the app for instance it's that's still blocked on game stores or App Stores um but you know what what'll happen is you get this Smash Hit game and then all the studios will go aha now we got to make our move

5:48we've got our our web three plan ready right um and then suddenly you'll see everyone sort of shift that direction and they can still I I I firmly believe that there's a model that every everyone's happy that the game studios can still make a lot of money you know one thing they could do over time is work towards decentralization right because I've played games before that

6:09they lose support from the developer and then you know you can't play anymore or it's hard to play or the GameStop's working correctly Etc um so decentralization would be a great thing too to offer to kind of move towards supporting blockchain um and of course people you know the original people always joke but it's true that the original nfts are you know skins right

6:31people spend so much money on fortnite skins and you know Call of Duty skins on for their guns and everything um the weapons and the games and the you know even the characters themselves people spend a lot of money on this so it's all it all of this just leads the player agency and then the the idea of asset ownership is just a perfect transition to to web 3 and to blockchains and it's

6:52it's really great because then then it's encouraged to to use marketplaces and swap items and trade and create an economy outside of the game that's not entirely reliant on the developer um whereas in the web 2 world it's highly discouraged and you know some games have little auction houses for in-game gold but you can't take it outside the game you can't really swap items across

7:12characters and it look it doesn't mean that every single item has to be an nft right you could have you know there's a concept called soulbound nfts as well that you could have these nfts that are lock to your account so that that's also a possibility so you know in basically long story short it's uh it's a perfect Evolution for gaming mhm I felt like

7:32there was this big pivot in the last I don't know how many years now maybe five to to eight years where they people real uh the game developers realized the potential of the in-game purchases you know before even in these uh MMO RPGs uh it used to be like people didn't want to it was sort of against like paying to get ahead uh but once they realize the

7:55revenue potential of like hey you know sure the game only cost a few dollars but if if you want to pay for some gold or for double experience um then all of a sudden people are just willing to do it and they all of a sudden theyve spent 100 times more on in-game purchases than they have on the actual game itself and I feel like that is the perfect Evolution into the nfts where hey you

8:15know you're already buying skins what if you can actually resell it in the future or you know get the rare ones and then hold on to it and actually you make a bunch of money while you're still enjoying the game yeah it's like this idea of play to win right it's it's an interesting double sure with with sort of uh you know um this idea this play to earn as well um and um you know uh

8:39people will you know you can spend a lot of money um to in these games and get sort of this God mode character right and it's interesting because you know I've done that where I'll go into games and okay I'll buy all the upgrades buy all the things spend all them buy everything you can buy and you actually get bored sometimes um so I think players really I think at the core it

8:59there's different archetypes of game character there's different archetypes of game players right so you have your group of people and and this is an interesting one um this is one counterargument against sort of the idea of crypto in games for instance that some category of players you know play for escapism you know they're unhappy with their regular life or just need a

9:18break or it's like a stress relief or whatever and they kind of want to forget about the regular World forget about their job and just immerse themselves in this game so the problem that some that play to earn for instance has have is that when you see those dollar signs and those tokens you kind of are reminded you're kind of brought out of the game reality and brought back into

9:36the real world and go oh yeah you know I need to get a job or you know it kind of takes you out of that reality um so there's still some things to F tune I think play to earn came off you know it it showed my view is it showed what what was possible Right with game with web 3 gaming and um but you know in the end came across more gimmicky I think to a

9:58lot of outside people and it left a bad taste um to the mainstream about what what crypto blockchain web 3 gaming is all about um but at least it showed that there was interest in that that you know what is foreseeable in the future uh and it's a viable space basically um yeah that's a great point because last year when you know web 3 gaming was taking crypto World by storm

10:21play to earn was sort of the main narrative and we saw that with axi infinity and some of these other games where the the point of the game was more just to make money it wasn't really to actually play the game and have fun and also I feel like if companies work towards just a play to earn model then they don't actually focus on the gameplay itself and the sustainability

10:44of the game and if the game isn't sustainable you know that's why some of the most successful games in the world that are open world as you say people want to you know it never ends but people keep playing them and and you mentioned there you know if you get all the good stuff and then you sort of get bored with the game then and like the the you've lost it from the developers

11:02you want to keep playing the game they want you to play Forever uh hopefully but there has to be that balance of like you're earning but the point is not to earn the point is to have fun and enjoy the game but also if you're earning a small amount on the side whatever is kind of fair where do you find that balance in these games that are going to come out yeah it's a tough topic because

11:24game economies are immensely complicated and especially when you introduce a lot of players to a game you know things can change you need to kind of be on top of it it's kind of like running a country's economy right you got to kind of account for you know inflation and and uh you know Discovery the the the metrics of of the math behind you know how rare

11:46certain items are it's it's very complicated um it's it's it's different than building it's a different Beast Al together than just the mechanics of a game of of you know go in and attack and fight with your swords or something right um the economies can be very complicated and I think that is a challenge because you're basically for you know with with

12:07web 3 you're basically saying hey let's let's focus more on these economies you need a lot of smart and we're starting to see it we're starting to see really smart people coming into the space and uh you know showing what can be done so I think we're getting there I just think games take a long time to build especially when you introduce web 3 and making things a little bit more complex

12:27for the economies um it's going to take time we're working on a game as well and it's it is very complicated uh to build a high quality game and to get the economies right you know and to make kind of you know uh keep everyone happy so to speak um so so it's a tough uh tough one but I think over time we're seeing more and more uh players push towards you know you're seeing your

12:49aliums your star atlases we were talking about shrapnel before the show um and many others kind of coming big times another one that are building these you know near AAA quality games let's call it or maybe AAA quality is um in some cases um games and um so we're we're getting there we're getting there but it's a category that I'm focusing on very heavily and I'm investing into it

13:13um um and get I'm getting involved you know helping other helping others build games and uh I I really think that this is one of the best use cases of blockchain Technology out there um in for digital assets as a whole um and I will not be surprised if we see a massive you know gaming Bull Run due to you know some element of blockchain I don't think the code has been completely

13:37cracked yet um to be honest I think we're still getting there in terms of figuring out sort of the perfect balance of what creates that chat GP effect of some Smash It game that uses some element of blockchain and web 3 you know is it just the nfts is it something with tokens is it the economics is it you know uh just the idea of ownership is it all of the above is it just having a

13:56really good game with those you know as I mentioned before we're still dealing with some problems for instance the the IOS app store you know you can't have an app on there that has crypto in it basically right or nfts I believe as well um so we're still dealing with some of that centralization problems some of those centralization problems um but sooner or later we're going to have our

14:15steam of web 3 right there's a few companies trying to do it where you're going to have decentralized or sort of separate web 3 native uh you know operating systems or apps or programs where you can run games off of and and build on top of and I think that's the core of the issue is that all these games are basically having to start from scratch and build everything but you

14:38know it'll be easier when some of this some of the more infrastructure level services are there and then games can kind of build on top of it build their cool game and then they have support around the tokens or the nfts or whatever aspect that they're they're integrating and I think also lingo is a problem too it's like you know nfts got demolished in the last cycle and the

14:57bare Market you know just for unfortunately just the the nature of a bare Market if pric is going down and kind of got a bad bad name and you know scams and things that are out there but end of the day um that's just terminology the technology itself is brilliant um and yeah again just a matter of time it's it's coming though that's for sure I I agree and that's a

15:20great point that you brought up about the you know having the the Apple App Store sort of blocking it right now but also the fact that there's for the hardcore Gamers and you know full built out games there's the steam store there's like epic games and these other platforms that you know for people that are really into gaming they're not going to the App Store maybe there's a small

15:40mobile version of the game but they're going to where the gaming platforms are and I feel like building a community and a platform around uh web 3 focused games could bring more attention to when there actually is a great game have that on the web 3 platform and then have all of the other games and sort of build your own profile on that I feel like that's

16:00something that needs to be coming in the near future yeah and I think you know in addition to that too I think the entertainment categor as a gen overall is going to drive adoption of gaming and gaming is going to help entertainment um the film the film space for instance there's a lot of people building you know models around integrating films with nfts and and things like that um a

16:22good friend of mine Rick dugdale built the first um made the first nft movie with Anthony Hopkins did very well um they launched nfts around it and building platforms Etc and I think the more we see in entertainment as a whole we'll see um we'll see that supporting G and helping with gaming um because there's a lot of Builder you know even even the epic games of the world they're

16:44all working on strategies around this um just like Hollywood like I mentioned with with film they're working on strategies around this and it's kind of just sitting there in their back pocket waiting for the right time guaranteed they're all doing it so yeah again just just a a matter of time and it's kind of a first mover thing it's you know you're

17:02not going to see all the studios go you know until you see one sort of thing but well interesting analogy is the Bitcoin ETFs that are that are potentially happening soon um or in the works for a while now that that could be coming out um you know at first it was like one or two players were trying to do it and then they kind of were having a hard time and then you start hearing of

17:22dozens of players trying to do it then you then the market starts pricing in 80% 70% 90% you know possibility of these ETFs happening and I think that fomo of of ETF is very analogous of what's going to happen with gaming again if I had to guess that you're going to start seeing more and more players then they're all goingon to be looking around okay is Blizzard doing this is Sony

17:44doing this is Sono doing this you know and they're all gonna start uh getting their strategies ready when they when they feel like the others are doing the same but again I always go back to the idea there's there's probably going to be some Smash Hit game that just really makes it obvious like the like the chat GT effect of why this is so relevant and

18:02I think it starts with Gamers and I think there's a there's an education element I really try to do my part and educating Gamers to of like hey you know all that money you spent on those skins like what if you could own it and uh you know potentially not that it's all about money but you know wouldn't it be cool to to own it like a like a baseball card

18:18I grew up with with baseball cards and other Collectibles and um I collect things even to this day you know on a small scale um so there's that cool element of of collecting and you know being able to see it in a wallet or see it on a market you know in some uh account somewhere and that's the other point right I think this the thing that's scary and I I remember the gala

18:37games Founders or or or one of the main guys um talking about this and they said the biggest problem one of the biggest problems they have is that people lose their seed phrase and get locked out of their accounts so I think on a on a technological level we're still dealing with the fact that the technology is there but it's it's a little too hard for people and vitalic and others have

18:58been trying to come up with solutions to storing Keys better and having backup methods using your friends and things like that and I think for gaming especially because and most people don't know this but gaming is bigger than film TV and music combined revenue wise it's a crazy crazy large industry um and uh you know I think that the technology needs to be kind of I don't want to say

19:21dumb down but it almost needs to be safer somehow to use so you don't so if you are going to and maybe the answer is a web 2.5 kind of world right where we don't all have to necessarily you know have wallets and keep our seed phrases where you can have you know two Factor authentication is maybe enough and it can be stored you know semi semi centralized you know even though I hate

19:43to say that but I think that's at least a transition where you can use the web three elements the BL the nfts and the tokens um just to get a taste and then if you want to take them out and put them in a wallet you can but you're not forced to and it's not like a technological barrier where you have to like learn all this new stuff and work towards it so I think the games that

20:03figure out whatever I don't even know the solution whatever that solution is to making that simpler and less likely that you're going to lose your assets since you're kind of becoming your own custodian of those assets once once the code is cracked on that that solves a lot of the problems and then then therefore you can it's going to be an easier transition for sort of the web 2

20:24game players to come over fully to web 3 because they're going to not be so worried about losing assets or having them hacked or stolen or whatever um so I think that's a big factor as well that's a great Point Brian and I feel like it should be something that's easy to crack they just have to fine-tune it for example if you had your World of Warcraft character you log in and

20:45obviously your character is already uh you know your character could be an nft itself you're going to log into the game and it'll be there your items will be in your pack in your game and then when you do some kind of safe transition to an external Market Marketplace it's almost like trading on Unis swap you could just authorize certain nfts to transfer them

21:04and provide value and hopefully not have to you know open the game and the first thing you do before you get to choose your character is write down these words and you know get a lecture about financial history and how you should protect your own assets um and there should be I feel like yeah there needs to be some kind of semi- centralized protection of hey you know these assets

21:23are inside this game we're going to help you take care of them yeah and it comes comes back to infrastructure right it's like the the infrastructure is still it's there for the for the technological user but I think you know uiux needs to improve in many cases to make things simpler and just the methods themselves of and I look I'm not even suggesting

21:45just to keep it centralized necessarily to to to do um to have access to those assets I'm thinking you know there's there's got to be a simpler solution I think vitalic talked about some the idea before I mentioned about um sharing you know sharing basically as a backup method if you lose your keys you know I could elect you and two others or something to be my sort of backups um

22:08that combined can get me back into my my wallet um so there there's there's got to be some disent there's got to be some more options um I just think the technology on that side has to catch up um for the oncoming and and look we're we're maybe we're heading back into a big bull run maybe nfts in the next year or two we'll get a real new all-time high and in real new interest in in nfts

22:31and and then which will inevitably um and is uh driving interest to to web through gaming um because that's a digital asset ownership I think is a huge component of it and I think you know on the note of asset ownership I think as we see real world assets become on go on chain um with with owning those assets I think that's going to again Drive interest back to to web 3 gaming

22:53um because people are going to keep going oh yeah well if we have our house deed on the Chain should we just have our fortnite skins on there as well um so I think it just makes a lot of sense yeah like I mentioned I'm I'm also very excited about the entertainment category as a whole um I think there's amazing things happening a part of some of them

23:10there's amazing things happening in the film space um you know and again it's it's the same story everyone's kind of trying to figure this web 2.5 kind of world out of like how do we how do we get people how do we get these in people's hands but not make it so hard yet and in in a person in an investment sense that those are the kinds of things I'm personally looking at for for

23:30Investments and um you know uh Angel Investments and even some VC stuff we're working on um is that infrastructure level of how do we you know let's assume that web 3 gaming in five years is a massive thing right what are the tools how do we reverse engineer what are the tools that are needed to kind of get there right and and there are tools that are definitely needed to get there um

23:53don't get me wrong it's it's not sort of 100% figured out at this stage but um it'll it'll happen people build these tools and um so whoever kind of figures and again I think that's probably taking a a note out of gala's book of I'm sure the blizzards of the world are going oh look at gala they're having this I love Gala but they're they're having these

24:13problems with like people losing their seed phrases for instance right and that's not a problem you know isolated to Gala by the way that's not a you know this is like every game uh every set of web 3 games that that have you know control full control full self custody right um and it's great from like a authenticity standpoint of you know blockchain native users that yeah we

24:35want we want self- custody and decentralization and and all this um self- sovereignty um but for the average person coming in it's like you know this just says oh yeah cool I like the idea of this but they don't know much about this web 3 world it's definitely still a challenge but I'm very bullish about the future of this category overall and speaking of the future as

24:57you mentioned at the beginning if you're looking to build a AAA game that's not something that can be done in even less than a year you know a few years um and but we know that there's more than a few of them in the works right now that are from sort of web 3 native game studios and I think there's a few that are already out that are sort of you know

25:16they went through the initial run of uh when when people first heard about web 3 and then sort of lost traction but they're I'm sure they're not giving up um they're in a multi-year vision uh and then as you mentioned there's also so the the traditional Studios that are like they're obviously doing something but they're waiting for that chat gbt moment to to pull the trigger what do

25:38you think is going to happen as we move into 2024 uh or maybe 2025 something big uh is it just the release of more games to experiment with the next stages or something else uh in advancements of pushing this actual web 3 gaming industry forward I think it's a combination I think it's everything we've said in this conversation really it's the it's the best quality games you

26:00know people were fed up with kind of lowquality games coming into web 3 and there was a reason for it it wasn't just because they wanted to build low quality games it was because as you said it takes a long time to build AAA level games right and it's very expensive so it's a combination of building really high quality games it's the technological aspect of of Just Simply

26:21Having the right tools to support you know a World of Warcraft size player base that that's not going to lose their keys for for instance um that's also a big part of it um and then yeah it's the awareness it's the education of of people you know like I us having these conversations of of why it's so beneficial to own these assets and I I think people naturally know this and I

26:43think as the other things come into place that makes it technologically easier and you do see one smash one or two smashit games come out with millions of players sort of overnight like a chat GTP um I think you'll see people I think you'll see other companies get on this more um so I'm I think 2024 2025 is going to be very strong for web through gaming um you know we're where in the

27:07last six months it's it's been sort of It kind of died down and it's been sort of creeping back up again um in terms of interest um in in development um so I think it's a best time I think if you're you're building games right now you'd be shooting yourself in the foot not to be looking at web 3 elements to to put into the game I think it's just the obvious

27:26future I I I think people are going to be looking back in many years and going wow these the you know web 2 games were the DVDs of the world and web 3 is digital right so it's uh I think we're g to have that Netflix moment where it's people are looking back on wow I can't believe we hung on to that for 20 years um before we sort of moved over to the

27:46new model it's it's really just the same archetypal story sort of speak of the Old Guard hanging on to what they have and no offense it's working for them right it's working they're making a lot a lot of games can are doing very well um so they don't have a lot of incentive to take the risk so to speak is probably how they see it is more of a risk so

28:04that's again goes back to my theory we need that chat GDP moment great insights Brian and for people that want to follow along with updates in the gaming industry and your insights uh on the web and uh the game also that I know you have in the works uh is there any place that people can go to learn more about that stuff yeah just any any social platform I'm Brian Deans

28:26on all all of them X and stagram and that kind of thing um so you can follow me there and and uh stay in the loop sounds great thank you so much for your insights into gaming and everything Brian all the best with following along in the space we should definitely follow up in the near future because I know there will be more updates to the web through gaming space absolutely yes

28:45thanks for having me yeah happy to chat anytime