00:00 • Piers
Hey guys. Welcome back to another episode of Metaverse musings. We’ve had a brief hiatus since the last episode, but couldn’t be more excited to be kicking off the new year with Ryan Wyatt. Who’s joining us as the head of YouTube gaming for those that don’t know. And we’ve also got Yan on. Ryan, thanks for being here.

00:17 • Ryan
Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here and talk all things gaming.

00:20 • Piers
Yeah, it’d be awesome. If we could, I guess, kick off and just do a bit of introduction, a bit of background on yourself for those that might not be familiar. Yeah. Yes.

00:27 • Ryan
I’ve basically spent my entire life in gaming in some way, shape or form. I started out playing competitively. I was a commentator for seven or eight years with major league gaming, ran their programming and tournament infrastructure in the early days, went over to Machinima and a gentleman in the early days for those that don’t know was a like a multi-channel network, the MTV of gaming in the early days of YouTube when YouTube first was created, which was really fun. I got to work with a lot of different content creators, start to figure out how we monetize gaming video. This was really the rise of people. Watching people play video games, which was under a lot of scrutiny in the early days of like, will people actually do this or not? It was a fun ride in that ultimately led me to Google about eight years ago, where I started the gaming vertical as gaming video is getting bigger.

01:19 • Ryan
Now it is one of the largest verticals on the platform, hundreds of millions of people are watching every single day. It’s been quite the journey and it’s been fun for me because I’ve gotten to see a lot of different perspectives as a player, a commentator, a streamer on Justin TV and Twitch, somebody that’s on the nine to five business end of the gaming industry as well. I kind of feel like I’ve been able to do it all. It’s led me here to this conversation today.

01:46 • Piers
No, that’s awesome. Yeah. Could you maybe tell us about what drew you to YouTube in the first place and what that whole process was?

01:53 • Ryan
Yes, it’s actually a great question. Machinima was, eh, we got an investment by Google ventures in the early days. Machinima did, because YouTube was like, okay, like people are starting to watch people play video games. Michigan was obviously kind of leading the charge here. YouTube was growing so fast. They didn’t really staff out anything to do with this initiative. Really what happened was, if you remember Amazon acquires Twitch, Susan becomes our CEO at YouTube, Google started in her garage, right? She comes over to become the CEO of YouTube and, they were like, we got to start a gaming vertical, we have to take this much more seriously. We don’t have anybody that has any kind of vertical expertise. I used to write these emails when I was at Machinima to YouTube kind of being like all the things and all the shortcomings they’ve had on the gaming side.

02:39 • Ryan
Right. They were like, who should we hire for this role? They said, let’s like reach out to that guy that thought he knew everything and see what he has to say about it all. 16 interviews later on over a course of a couple of months, I became the head of gaming at YouTube to tackle all those problems that I outlined in. Let me tell you, it was good appreciation for, from my perspective as well, because you really start to understand how complicated it is to change things and get things done at such a massive scale. So, yeah, that’s kinda what got me through there and that’s what I’ve been focused on ever since. I mean, really had to, there was no infrastructure for gaming, so like hiring out the team globally, setting our product, vision and strategy, kind of establishing who we want to be in this space has been really what I’ve been focused on over the years.

03:29 • Yan
Yeah. You’ve been there from the beginning and it’s been quite a long tenure. I was wondering what were some of the most interesting projects you worked on while you were there?

03:37 • Ryan
Yeah, I see. I’ll talk about the one that failed because I feel like I learned the most from that. I first started, were like, look, we’re really behind on a lot of product innovation that we need to do for both gaming publishers, gaming creators and gaming viewers. What we wanted to do is we launched a standalone YouTube gaming app, right. This was an app that you could download on your phone as a mobile app. It was a desktop experience you could go to on, youtube.com/gaming. Basically what it did is it took the entire gaming video, Corpus moved it to this isolated experience and made it, much easier to discover, made it easier to build faster because you didn’t have all these like broader YouTube dependencies. You can build as fast as you want in a up environment, because you had all the autonomy in the world.

04:22 • Ryan
On paper, that all sounds great, right? It’s like, okay, easier to find gaming content build, accelerate your building from a product perspective. The big problem that we faced with that when we launched it was I love the app and I love the product, but you lose that great funnel that clearly YouTube pass people coming into youtube.com every single day, every, people opening up the YouTube app. What really happened was you find yourself not just like competing with like a Twitch, but YouTube itself, right? Because you’re just another app on a phone that, maybe slides in the 6, 7, 8 slot. For those that are mobile, heavy users, you’re not going to get a lot of love if you’re not a top five app on a consumer basis. We basically ended up just like killing and sunsetting that we brought over all the products. That was like, that was the sad part, right?

05:09 • Ryan
You build this thing, doesn’t work out, you don’t get the traffic that you want, so you sunset it. The redeeming factor was all of the great stuff that we had built very specifically for gamers inside of this app, got ported over to YouTube. Things like channel memberships that are huge revenue drivers for YouTube now, and basically all the things that monetize outside of ads, business for YouTube become comes over. It actually ends up benefiting the broader creator economy immensely. So, it was sad because you love this kind of standalone experience allowed you to build really quick, but couldn’t get the traffic. Now we’re kind of tinkering and getting the best of both worlds. We move slower on product innovation and development is the trade-off. On the bright side you have 350 million logged in users that watch gaming video every day, YouTube gaming is far and away just off of that metric alone, the largest gaming platform in the world.

06:00 • Ryan
For me, that was like a challenging prod project, but, probably learn the most from it.

06:06 • Piers
Yeah, no, that’s super cool. I, I want to go straight for the juggler a bit here and get your perspective on, in some respects, this all Web2 versus Web3 framing rate. One could argue that as like one, the big tech mega Corp’s, if you like, right. In many ways, it’s kind of the antithesis of this movement. I’m curious about how you think about, the role that these big platforms are playing in the Web3 era and how that might relate to the world we might be moving towards.

06:34 • Ryan
No, it’s a great question, man. I, I look, I think, at YouTube, we spent a lot of time thinking about it, the easiest answer for like what YouTube’s current participation in Web3 is we’re the largest repository of learning and content for anything that’s crypto blockchain, Web3 based, right? If you really want to learn about anything that’s happening in this space, and you’re very fascinated by it, the best place you can possibly go is youtube.com. I think that says a lot about really what YouTube is offering is in the web2 world to web3, right? I think YouTube is going to be responsible for onboarding hundreds of millions of people into this space and learning from this space. I think that’s like a, that’s a, that’s the low hanging fruit, if you will, opportunity. We have to start figuring out other ways that we can participate in this space.

07:18 • Ryan
Most recently we tried something that was really fun. Each year, we give our top thousand plus creators and really just try to spread out love and give our creators gifts every single year. Right. Just to say, thank you for them participating in being content creators on the platform this year we did and sent out NFTs. So we worked with three different artists. We partnered with infinite objects and then dapper labs on fulfillment. We send out NFTs to our creators and they loved it. It was a huge hit, right. I do think, I can’t speak for the other tech companies because I feel like they’re all going to try to enter it in some way, shape or form in their own way. For YouTube, it feels like a very natural fit to figure out how we kind of do certain things within the creator economy to help bridge the gap.

08:00 • Ryan
Now, big tech companies in general have the luxury of being established in Web2 and have the luxury of being able to sit back and watch what does happen in Web3 and what innovation does happen and how they can participate. I think there’s, and look, I think that YouTube has had that luxury for a while. Right. We are behind on live streaming, but we continue to develop products around it. Cause we know people care. I think as viewers and creators alike have more asks around what Web3 offering is, YouTube will come in and do time to deliver that. Yeah, I, I think the best part about Web3 is it’s not going to be big tech, right. It is other people that are going to be developing and building that. I actually think that’s the way it should be. I think that’s kind of what’s inspiring about the movement.

08:45 • Yan
It makes a lot of sense. I know you mentioned you’ve been a gamer since you were a kid. That really when it clicked for you or was there a period when, in your more adult life that it really clicked for you to kind of yeah. Wondering how the transition went from, being gaming, recreational to more on the professional side as well?

09:03 • Ryan
Yeah, man, that’s a good question. I started playing when I was three with Mario and the NES I had gamed my whole life, from getting into halo to Counter-Strike could UCS one-six, playing in like Cal, O league and so forth, it wasn’t really good at Counter-Strike, but it has always been one of my favorite games really where it clicked for me was in college. Right. I was doing kind of the sports thing, working as a contractor for MLG at the time, I knew I’m a junior at Ohio state and I’m just like, I really want to work in the gaming industry, but I, I, I don’t make games, I’m not a developer. Right. I was trying to think about what’s the best path possible forward. I really like attached myself to just this e-sports movement. Right? Like, these tournaments and people are gonna watch people play.

09:48 • Ryan
We were showing up at a hotel ballrooms, very small prize pools. I kind of attached myself to that wagon. I moved out to Los Angeles to work with Machinima and the rest is history, but I think really the PR the forcing function was I don’t have much time left in college. I got to figure my s**t out when I had to get a job. We were going through a recession too. Right. You had people that were graduating, they couldn’t get jobs at all either. Right. I was like, I’m gonna take a risk and just find this job in the gaming industry seems really niche right now the worst case scenario is like, my ass is back in Ohio and I’m taking on some, non-gaming job. And so that’s kinda how it happened. It was really that sense of urgency to like, I gotta get into this space because this is where my heart and passion is.

10:32 • Ryan
When I, and I’ll tell you, like, the realization for me is if I’m not passionate about something, I was like a terrible student in school, on subjects. I didn’t care about. Subjects that I care deeply about, I was like, at my best. So for me, it was very easy. I’m like, I don’t think I’m going to be a, a great contributor unless I pursue my passion. That was the other thing I was like, eh, I got to work in gaming for that reason alone.

10:53 • Piers
Super cool that, kind of the, obviously passion led towards the conviction in that space. And, you wanted to take the risk and jump in, obviously that was like, it was way less obvious back then, right. That the gaming was going to become what it is. I’m curious, like how you reflect on the evolution of the industry, since you’ve been professionally engaged and perhaps some of the factors that led to people miss underestimating or sorry, underestimating and misunderstanding some of the factors that were going to drive this thing.

11:20 • Ryan
Yeah. It’s funny, man. Like one of my favorite sayings is leap and the net will appear, and I kind of felt that way about the industry. It was like, I actually, it, I didn’t have this clear perspective of how everything was going to play out and be lying to you if I did. I just felt that, I’m a gamer, there’s other people out there like me, this is really interesting to me. I hope others find it really interesting and let’s just figure out how to make it into a business. Right. We didn’t, even when we first started uploading gaming videos, there was no monetization. You were just doing it purely for fun to like show off really cool clips and stuff. I started working at Machinima was like, okay, in order to get more people to create content, you want to start to incentivize them.

11:59 • Ryan
Right. This is like how we started wrapping our heads around it. So, putting ads and pre-roll on video was like a, a natural first step. Honestly the best way to just do it is like when you have some level of conviction, it really just doesn’t matter what other people think. I don’t mean that in like a disingenuous way. I think it’s just, you have to be really focused on what you believe in and then, relentlessly pursue it. I just kind of always felt that like, we’re gonna figure out a way to make this all work and it’s going to work in some way, shape or form to what degree and how big it would be. It was always anyone’s best guess. I just had a lot of conviction that, there’s other people like me that are gonna enjoy it, like I do. That, that in itself was enough.

12:42 • Piers
Yeah. No, that’s super cool. I’m wondering as well, like given how things have evolved, just had to reflect on like the role that games are playing in modern society and where we’re at. I was like to reflect on our journey as a digital species, as I like to say, but I’m curious in your thoughts around like, the role that these are playing and our modern digital and entertainment landscape and what the future might hold for them.

13:04 • Ryan
Yeah. You know, what’s so funny. Like even if you look back like 10 years ago, the stigma and cliche around gamers was just that it was like young boys playing in their parents’ basement. Right. If you just think about what has happened over the last 10 years, where gaming has truly been something that everybody does, you have two and a half billion people that play video games in some way, shape or form, even if they don’t self identify as a gamer, right. They’re playing mobile games or whatever the case may be. What has happened is the development spectrum of types of games have gotten so much more broad, so much more inclusive. I think really what you’re starting to see is like gaming is really the number one form of entertainment for gen Z, I think because of the diversity of games. And, and because it’s so inclusive now that has brought it along way.

13:49 • Ryan
To me, I’m like astonished at the impact that has had on just, the entertainment industry, let alone the world at this point where everybody’s participating in it in some way, shape or form. I think because of this, you’re starting to have these conversations, like, what is the metaverse, what does it mean? People spending more time in digital worlds because I think people find not only just entertainment and gaming, but they find they’re finding their like social identity and community inside of the games industry as well. These are pretty like tectonic shifts in just a short amount of time, 10 years being that. I think you’re going to continue to see that where I don’t even know 10 years from now, if we’re going to be calling them video games, because like everybody’s going to be participating in digital environments and that it almost be like such, it’ll just be like such a common occurrence anymore.

14:38 • Ryan
I think people will just realize that this is like impacting their lives in much more ways than they realize. We’d love to know how.

14:43 • Yan
You kind of made your way into crypto, both on a, I guess it started personally. Then, which is usually how it happens with everyone. They, they get in personally and then kind of fall down the rabbit hole and then realize they want to get in potentially?

14:57 • Ryan
Yeah, yeah, no, definitely. Okay. So obviously, I wasn’t super interested in like the DeFi applications of like crypto right. So I was kind of just like, I would degenerate-ly trade crypto in the early days, not even early days, really just like 2017 and 18, just because of the availability. Right. Had absolutely zero interest in it otherwise. Right. Really was only trading it just because of the volatility. Like, no actual interest in crypto at all. Other than that, right. Like, almost like the, almost like honestly gambling in my mind at the time. Yeah, that’s a tell maybe about me where I really started getting interested was obviously like NFTs, it was like all of a sudden it was okay. Like here’s like a real application in a gaming environment and that’s really what hit home for me. When I started to see like this idea of genuine digital ownership, were just talking about how, like, you’re starting to see more people spend my time in digital environments.

15:55 • Ryan
That was where I was like, okay, this is this stuff’s going to really matter because humans inherently like peacocking, you really can’t do that unless you have verifiable digital ownership and that people actually agree on that ownership. What’s going to happen in these digital worlds is so different. Right. That kind of is what started me down the rabbit hole of really becoming actually interested. It was like when I started seeing decentralized apps, primarily games being built and you’re like, it was like kind of my aha moment personally, that was like, okay, I need to learn, just, even as the head of gaming YouTube, I’m like, I gotta to learn way more about this. Like this was a complete blind spot to me. My initial endeavor was just when I went down, this path was just to be educated because my job is in the gaming industry and it felt like such a blind spot.

16:40 • Ryan
Obviously, I went further than that and became very passionate about where this will lead us into the future with the role that it’ll play in the games industry. I think we’ll be pretty significant. Yeah, honestly, that’s kinda, and I haven’t really stopped at that point. Like the thing that’s really interesting about the Web3 spaces, it’s really moving very fast and it’s evolving very fast and there’s a lot of different facets of it. Right. As soon as you start to get into like, oh, what’s an NFT, like, what does that have to do with blockchain gaming? You start then you’re like, oh, what’s tokenomics. Like, oh, what are these different layer-2s? Oh, how are people starting to develop? Like, it just becomes this like tree at the top with all of these roots and it’s almost like you can’t stop learning.

17:24 • Ryan
There’s so much going on. What has also happened to me is I’ve just become very fascinated by that. I think some of the smartest people I know are in this space, which is fascinating in its own. Right. You know? I have just very much enjoyed engaging on all of these topics. It’s a long-winded answer to your question, but I think that long, this is what a lot of people are getting into and why they become so fascinated. It’s like when you read a good book is a constant page-turner. That’s exactly what I feel like about Web3.

17:53 • Yan
Yeah. No, I couldn’t agree more on like the crypto gaming side. You either me, I guess you were, there were a lot of parallels you could draw between themes and in traditional gaming and you could start to see them kind of move into the crypto and crypto gaming side, I’m sure with CS and playing for skins and kind of just the idea of that individual asset ownership. I was wondering if there were a lot of overlaps that you saw or kind of overlapping themes that drew you to like, I guess crypto gaming specifically.

18:22 • Ryan
The natural one is like, you look at like, Counter-Strike cause that’s the game I played and you have this marketplace and you have these skins that have value. Although you don’t actually know how many of them and what level of scarcity, you just, you inherently know because you are opening boxes and you don’t ever see a bayonet fade knife. Right. You just know that it’s like a scarce item to get, and then, you’re buying and reselling all of this. And, and although it stays inside of the steam ecosystem, like that’s pretty fascinating. I think you just generally my personal interest as a gamer to see that happen more, and then this comes out, like, I think this is like a, we’ll start to get it. I feel like into the really interesting topics here, but the reality of it is a lot of those systems with a centralized database and SQL you can do a lot of this.

19:07 • Ryan
And so, but we don’t. Right. We don’t like, so like, yes. There a technological ability to do stuff that resembles blockchain gaming? Yeah. I think you can get pretty close. You could argue about like the decentralization nature, the genuine ownership nature for if you’re more of like a decentralization purist, but you could do something that’s like, I know that this is my item. I know that, you previously owned this item. I can sell this item on a marketplace and I can liquidate it in USD. Like that is a technically possible thing without the blockchain, but nobody’s doing it. It’s not happening. Therefore I’m like really interested in the blockchain because they are doing it. They are developing it. It is happening over there. Like, you can kind of go back and forth on like the technological ability to get something that’s close to resembling blockchain gaming.

19:54 • Ryan
The fact of the matter is no one’s doing it. Those have attempted to get close to it. Haven’t really done it. Right. I kind of was like, okay, for me as a gamer, I like spending money on games that I care deeply about. I like the idea of being able to participate early in games. Imagine, Valorant Season 1, I buy a skin that doesn’t come back on the marketplace, the game grows, I get to kind of grow with it and the economics with it. That’s where I really started to get fascinated in this space because you saw people that kind of shared the same vision and actually wanted to figure out the complexity of these dynamics. It was very easy for me to see and then be like, yeah, I know we can technically do it, but nobody is doing it. Let’s like ride this wave because you have a lot of people that are enthusiastic about this perspective and making it work out.

20:44 • Piers
Totally. I think that’s one of the super interesting things that I’ve always observed around every game or, well, every game that there always seems to appear these shadow economies, right. Even if no, one’s actively trying to do it from the developer perspective, the user base is right. There’s always that kind of gravitational force at play obviously much more apparent in MMORPGs, but you mentioned Valorant you can go and buy cracked bright points and this, that, and the other, again, you can find economies around all of these things. Yeah, I definitely see the parallels there, but curious, like obviously a lot of these things are somewhat interwoven, but to the extent that you can, like, which of the aspects of this technology that were most potent that resonated the most, you kind of touched upon the NFT component, the real asset ownership to begin with, but I’m curious, like in terms of your own mental journey down that path, like what held the most alert to begin with and drew your attention and then kind of, I guess how your thinking evolved around that too.

21:37 • Ryan
Honestly. I mean, there’s a lot to even unpack there, so I will try to keep it a little more concise, but I really feel my general take is like, when I am putting money into a game in any, and especially in a significant size. Like, let’s just say hundreds plus I want to be able to have some liquidity in that and that investment. Right. Because if I have liquidity in that investment, I’m willing to invest more. Right. Obviously in a, and being very smart about it, understanding the space is very volatile, but like as a decision maker of like how I want to deploy my money and I have a game that I like, and I know that there’s some liquidity and resale value in that game, even if it’s losing money, right. Like the fact that like the game is going down and I can pull out is really helpful.

22:24 • Ryan
This was where I first started getting interested because I was like games don’t offer that, like I am, I’ve spent thousands of dollars on valor. Like I’m a complete N and valor and playing that game and spending it, that game just wraps up one day. Like no one plays it anymore. It’s just like, you’re out, dude, you’re just out of that money. It goes back to the, like the argument of like, yeah, they, games could do it. And it’s like, they’re not though. Right. That’s why I really wanted to go into a place where people are making games that are allowing for these types of events. Right. That, and it really, like I’m not a, decentralized, purist by any way, shape or form. Like, I didn’t really care about the like verifiable, digital ownership as much as I cared about that part. As games started at like, that is really what, watching gaming to me is really introducing, but then there was all these kinds of like, as you do go down that rabbit hole, there’s like the ability to enable that behavior within a game opens up a lot of really interesting paths.

23:21 • Ryan
Seeing like how Dow’s are participating, how guilds are being created around this. Right. Just even the idea of like game development with governance, tokens, like, yeah, you can’t build games. Committee-based, they’re going to be s**t games if you do, but allowing your community to be decision-makers. Some of the updates, weapon tuning, what you’re going to do at a macro level moving forward, I think is important. In fact, nobody should care more about communities than game developers because they are making or breaking it, whether they’re a content creator or a player themselves. I just started to see like, outside of my selfish motivation of putting money in being able to get money out and like having fun, playing a game and an economics like that, it was started to be all of those like 10 gentle things that, around out blockchain gaming, where I started to get really, even more fascinated by it.

24:08 • Ryan
I guess that’s like how I kind of delineated, like how I first got into it to like, what really started to my eyes as you branch out of the possibilities with inside that ecosystem.

24:16 • Piers
Yeah. I guess I’m also curious then. So, you touched upon a few topics there, like some of the areas of application and how these things are evolving, I guess I’m curious, like, just from a personal level, what aspects of how this is evolving most interesting to you, obviously this like e-sports Guild into plays beginning to be pretty interesting. I think obviously having this large guilds, operating as actual capital allocators and player liquidity allocators across these economies are super neat, but I’m curious. Yeah. From, from your perspective, what’s kind of exciting you the most about where some of this could go.

24:51 • Ryan
Yeah. What I’ve been fascinated about that, like, if you think about a lot of the games right now that are out, they’re not objectively like high quality polished AAA games, right. There’s games, there’s really cool games that have been built from the ground up. There’s a lot of really bad games. They’re scams, there’s pumping dumps. There’s like a lot of bad behavior as well. It’s worth acknowledging. Right. You have some of these games that are starting to crack the surface of just like the general mechanics of what blockchain gaming are. And I think that’s really fascinating. And obviously everybody’s always like Axie, right. Axie, Axie. That’s like the one thing to point to, and I think this industry is going to need like five or six examples to point to that are really great. Right. I feel like I’m starting to get fascinated by these high polished AAA type games that are on the horizon over the next 18 to 24 months.

25:40 • Ryan
Right. I think this is going to give gamers really good examples because like a gamer right now looks at Axie and it’s not into this world that we all are hyper involved with. I think they like, don’t get it right. It’s like, I’m not really sure. Like this is the type of games that are for me when you start to see like an MMORPG or a tactical shooter, that’s like hyper polished come out. You’ll be really excited. These games that are like hybrid on chain off chain that are being developed are really fascinating to me because I really think that’s what it’s going to do. It’s going to open up the aperture of users that are introduced to this in a real, like in a much more natural way, instead of like how much it kind of feels forced right now, where it’s like NFTs and your games, like it’s going to be so cool.

26:20 • Ryan
It’s going to change the world. Right. I think people are going to be introduced to like a really great game, like an Ember sword. It’s going to be on chain off chain. Right. Like, you can actually just play this game and have fun with it. You can slowly get yourself introduced to marketplaces and the actual blockchain part of it. Right. That’s, what I’m most excited for is people seeing high polished games and that, we, as a Web3 gaming enthusiast industry, you’re going to continue to be able to point to more examples and see like, Hey, that’s what we’ve been talking about. That’s what excites us. That’s why we got into it. I think we’re not that far off, like I really do. I feel like the next 12 to 18 months is going to be really good for the space,

27:02 • Yan
You have a incredible understanding of kind of the Web2 gaming space and a great vision for the Web3 side. I’m kind of curious what elements of like the Web3 gaming do you think will resonate most with like the traditional Web2 gamers or kind of what elements of Web3 will permeate the most, who through the Web2 space and what might not see it necessarily as much adoption if you have a strong feeling on the letter.

27:27 • Ryan
Yeah. I do think it’s the, oh, this is the thing. I think it’s the open marketplaces and digital ownership aspect of it because, and this is where, like, I feel like a lot of people are talking past each other, because again, that goes back to that argument that it’s already technically feasible in Web2 now, but people aren’t doing it. Right. What I think is going to happen is in that, look, this is anyone’s best guess. I’m kind of going out on a limb here, but I think if you go back to that 2.7 billion gamers worldwide, right. Obviously that goes from like super casual to my mom playing candy crush to like, hardcore Counterstrike player. Right. I think if you say like, look, five to 10% of that total addressable market is going to get introduced to blockchain games and they’re gonna be really into it.

28:07 • Ryan
I think the question is you’re going to see how much of the like revenue actually shifts over because so much of the games industry revenue is driven by actually a small amount of the overall user base of what we will call whales, right? Not the most eloquent branding of them, but people that are really willing to deploy a significant amount of money into the ecosystem. You might only get like five to 10% of the total addressable market of gamers that go over to blockchain. The question is how much of the revenue is going to go over? Because I do think whales are going to love an environment where you have a good game and a really strong and good economy to participate in. What will happen, I think is like, you’re going to see Web2 whales starts to move in a high polished Web3 games and Web2 developers are going to have of a conundrum there of, okay.

28:55 • Ryan
They have now gotten a taste of what we have been, not allowing for development, right? Like we have consciously not enabled, even though we could, and the question will be, well, sh*t, what do we do about that? Right. Cause we knew that now this is a, now this is like this concept of like open economies. Digital ownership becomes almost like a product feature in a developer’s mind. Right. It’s like, okay, cat’s out of the bag. People love it. They’re participating in it now, what do we do? Do we actually just start develop our next game on the blockchain because it’s already happening there and the platform works and there’s a great developer tools and yeah, we could do it on our own, but it already exists here. Or do we like dig in and actually give them what they want and our Web2 way centralized servers, sequel all that.

29:36 • Ryan
Right. I think that is going to be the crux of the conversation. Now, if this plays out over three or five years or the next 12 months, we’ll see. As a web developer, like that’s where I would be keeping my eye, what I wouldn’t do, which is what I hate. Some people are like, oh, just like inject, turn your game into a blockchain game. It’s like, oh, it’s so simple. It’s like NFTs. Like, oh, you can just own your skins. It’s like, oh my gosh. It’s like, I can’t stand that argument anymore. Right. Not every game needs to be a blockchain game. Just like not every game needs to be free to play. Not every game needs to be like Minecraft, right? Like this is the beauty of having billions of people play. It’s allowed different experiences for different people to write. I think we also get hung up on this of like every game needs to turn on the blockchain game.

30:21 • Ryan
I think AAA publishers to come up with new IP that really caters to individuals that are interested in blockchain gaming experiences and start from the ground up and then understand those economies. What does one look like when it’s in Web2 versus Web3 and then internally start to make those comparisons, make those decisions. But game development takes so long. All of these things I’m talking about could take place over five-year time horizon. A lot of this stuff takes time to play.

30:46 • Piers
That’s super interesting framing that you just shared with us there. I’m curious. Cause you talk about attracting this whale population, the deep spenders across to maybe more crypto native games where, there aren’t really upper limits on maximum spend in the way that there might be in some of these other game economies and whatnot. I’m curious, like obviously that user base kind of subsidizes like a lot of the other users in the traditional Web2 games, right. They’re basically who’s financing these things. If the primary spending population does migrate across to that world, then like basically who’s left. Like, who’s subsidizing those free to players in the traditional games. Right. It feels as though that might actually end up having to draw across all the developers and whatnot anyways. So it could become self-fulfilling.

31:28 • Ryan
I actually had like agree with that. What props those free to play economies up are the whales, right? Like if you draw them into blockchain games and honestly just even like a meaningful amount, not all of them, right. It does fundamentally change the entire way that you think about free to play right. Of this PPO time versus money conversation. Right. When you’re, and when you’re being rewarded for time over here and you have an upside and money, it’s like, oh my gosh. It’s like, I’m now I can kind of see like the best of both worlds over here. That’s why I think you can hate on it as much as you want as a Web2 game developer, right? Like that. It’s like, there’s no place for NFTs. It’s not what we want, but like this has gone, it’s going to happen. There’s going to be a subset of the games industry.

32:18 • Ryan
That’s going to have blockchain game experiences. It’s inevitable. Doesn’t even really in my mind, doesn’t really matter what your opinion is. Or the game developer, that’s like writing medium articles, sh*ting all over entities because it’s going to happen. Right. Because gamers are always looking for new game experiences. These are going to offer cool game experiences and they’re going to go play on that. Right. So that’s just the reality of it. I think, really it’s coming down to, how’s it going to actually impact all like some of those ecosystems, like free to play and what does it mean for the future? It time will tell, but I do think it’s going to require particularly free to play game developers to put like, honestly, consider developing their games on the blockchain in the future, or at least offering something that feels like pho blockchain, if you will, right?

33:04 • Ryan
Like, we’ll get you enough experiences. Like we’ll provide utility in your, the skins and cosmetics that you offer. Like, we’ll give you like a faux-governance token because of the gold that you earned in game. We’ll give you wait and right. Like, it won’t be decentralized period, but there’ll be like, oh look like some of these mechanics exist in blockchain. Like, we kind of have them as well. Right. The war that will wage on then is how much value do those things have when they’re not on the blockchain or there’s not the liquidity factor or are those like genuine, like when you’re voting off gold that you’ve earned and you don’t really know like behind the curtain. If that actually is the weight that it should be in your voting power, or they’re just saying like, no, we wanted this option to win with, but it looks like the community voted for it.

33:43 • Ryan
Right. Like it’s a facade. That’s, what’s going to get really interesting in the free to play world when they start to mimic blockchain game, product features if you will.

33:53 • Piers
Yeah, that’s super cool. I hadn’t really, I hadn’t really thought about it too much from that perspective, but it’s definitely interesting. I’m also curious, what you’re seeing in conversation with some of the large publishers that, are working with large established, traditional IP that we might, all know, I’ve also spent a lot of time on this side, over the last 12 months and like, spectrum of different responses and approaches. Some people were getting excited pairing to mobilize and then, see things like the backlash from the Ubisoft play and whatnot. And, it’s tempered enthusiasm and whatnot, curious, what kind of timeline you anticipate this happening on what some of the key questions and perhaps obstacles that these people are asking themselves are, and kind of how you see that side of things playing out. Cause I’m still of the view that strong established IP is what’s going to help drive, mass audiences to crypto sooner rather than later.

34:44 • Piers
I also agree with your earlier comment that these should probably be bottoms up versus like bolt on in terms of, crypto integrations.

34:51 • Ryan
Yeah. I mean, I have a lot of thoughts on that. I think… you asked a question early on in this conversation about Big Tech’s thoughts on web3 right.. on YouTube. I think the game publishers kind of get to sit in the same position. They’re really big. What they’re doing now is clearly working for them. Like the game industry has been in a bull market for a long time, as far as just innovation and growth and market cap and so forth. It’s hard to… If I’m like, if I’m like..CEO like, and I’m thinking about what should increase participation be in that I need to urgently pivot into blockchain games. There’s no reason to believe that they have built an entire company from the ground up in a way that has been very beneficial to both the players, both the riot, the lovers of the IP and so forth.

35:39 • Ryan
Right. I don’t know that there’s a sense of urgency for anybody that need to jump in it right away. Should they be fascinated and learning about it? Absolutely. Like all big Web2 companies should absolutely be paying attention to this space and learning about the space and those that don’t, or aren’t talking about it right now are falling behind fast, right. Because this market is moving fast. I think really what’s going to happen is like you can’t, if you’re going to do it, be committed to it. I don’t know that I fully believe on a bolt on approach. Not that it’s not necessarily a way to kind of enter the space and put your foot in. I just think you it’s a lose situation because you upset an audience. That’s not familiar with the tech and what it can bring. They haven’t seen really good, like practical applications from a gamer’s perspective.

36:25 • Ryan
It’s really not fully embracing blockchain gaming and decentralization either. Right. You find yourself, when you try to please everyone, you kind of please know one thing in that situation. I think the best thing that they can do right now is continue to look at this market, think about how they would develop their next project on the block, right from the ground up and then go from there. I do think in a world, in the future, again, over a five-year time horizon bolt-on approaches might work, as people are like really excited about marketplaces, as we talked about this, like conundrum of how do you actually mimic some of the web3, like the great offerings that Web3 have in Web2 environments, bolt-on, digital marketplaces is really important, right. Where it’s like, okay, you want to enter this part of the gaming marketplace. It’s obviously all on the block.

37:13 • Ryan
Right. Because then you have all of those, the great opportunities that come from that. I think it’s really great for them to learn, to be educated, to start to think about their developer roadmap and how they’re going to tap into the market, because inevitably they’re going to have to consider it in some way, shape or form. Right. And, and it goes back to kind of what I keep beating on the is do you do it in your Web2 way or do you just fully embrace the Web3 development path? They should be talking about this at all levels of game development from the C level to designers to the bottom right community. I think 22 is going to be the year where a lot of people who have been blinded or oblivious to this are going to get educated. I think that’s going to be great for everybody.

37:55 • Ryan
Right. We right now seem to be talking past each other quite often in this space.

37:59 • Yan
Yeah. And, and so, building on that and what you’ve seen in there in the growth with kind of the Web2 side, what do you think is missing from the Web3 gaming and NFT scene, and that is needed to help kind of accelerate the progress or take it to the next level.

38:16 • Ryan
There’s like a lot of things, right? If you think like one, there’s so many NFT, like projects, roadmaps where they’re horrendous, right. Or they’re selling NFTs in order to raise money, to develop a game that’s never going to come. Right now, if you’re not very savvy, like you could just get your ass handed to you. Right. You can get into the wrong project, you can get scanned, you get rubbed. Right. Some of these games that are coming out are comically bad. Right. I think you just need some overall professionalism and Polish in this industry. Right. It’s cool because like, some of it is genuine great indie games that people are gonna play in. Some of them that can be indistinguishable from like a really bad game or bad economy or bad token omics or whatever, they’re the, that they’re doing that could be wrong.

39:02 • Ryan
Cause listen, like, we have to be mindful of like the human nature of this. People are going to come in with money. They worked hard to earn and they’re going to spend it in this place. This place is really like, it’s hyper volatile right now, like Web3 gaming. Like, they might not know everything and how to place this money. They might spend 200 bucks to buy it NFT to get into a game. Two months later that thing is like $6 or they can’t even get it, can’t even unload it. Right. It’s so different when you go into like I know valor, it’s not going anywhere anytime soon. Like, my investment feels pretty safe even though it’s not liquid. Right. I do think like we need to have better safety, like better UI on, because some of the consumer facing stuff like, the Metta mask wallet and Ronin and all of this, so that it’s much easier for a general consumer to kind of feel like they can get into this space.

39:54 • Ryan
Like, oh, I understand like this token that I’m buying, or I understand this empty, or like, I understand that this game is new. There’s volatility in it versus this, three-year-old game. Right. I do think, we’re like in the wild west right now, blockchain gaming. I think as some of this stuff gets figured out as the cream rises to the top and then becomes more stable participation, becomes easier to get into. I think then you’re going to see, like, that will be the meaningful turning point. Obviously, like I keep preaching, like higher polished games, more well-balanced games, like these played our own games, there’s definitely like a fine line where, you need to start at, you need to have higher spending power and so forth, right to kind of keep getting further. There’s a lot that needs to be unpacked, but I mean, that’s the fun, and that’s the exciting part of being in this space.

40:41 • Ryan
It’s like figuring these things out, helping, improving these things, raising awareness around them. I mean, I think people need to be able to explore and take risks without judgment. I, and I feel like anybody that’s in Web3 is doing that. Anybody that’s looking at Web3 from the outside is highly judgmental. Right. You’re kind of, I think this is like something that will continue to play out for the foreseeable future, but these are the things that need polished up on the blockchain gaming side. It’s, when you democratize it, the way that kind of Web3 does, you gotta take the good with the bad. I think right now the bad seems to be out shining the good, but it won’t stay that way forever in the public eye.

41:22 • Yan
No, no. That makes a lot of sense, particularly with some of those barriers and kind of expanding on that. Do you think the games in the future that will be most successful will have to kind of obvious escape that the crypto component and, people would come in and play, not realize there’s a crypto element and then start to get involved on that front or do you think there’ll be more crypto native from the start? The games themselves will alert people in.

41:43 • Ryan
There’s a couple of questions that I hear in that, like one, we should make it abundantly clear that not every game needs to be a blockchain crypto based game. Like Minecraft doesn’t need to, like I want my son to be able to play like a Minecraft and roadblocks without having to worry about like depositing Ethereum into his digital wallet, like just enjoy games, have fun. A lot of people play games, justice, scape, reality to be entertained. They don’t need to be introduced to the economics. They don’t need to be introduced to all of this, like, scarcity of items and selling these items I have to purchase. These ones are playing to earn, right. Like just like chalk that off and allow people to just enjoy playing video games for the pure entertainment and keep that kind of the way that it is. And I think that’s fine.

42:24 • Ryan
I do think then you have this subsection where if you’re in crypto the best way to get the next, billion users or a hundred million users, whatever metric you’re focusing will absolutely be gaming. It’ll be the introduction of this, but the flow is brutal right now. Like think about the Axie flow. Like Axie continues to be a prime example, dude, like imagine what somebody has to go through. It’s like, okay, what is this? I’m like, okay, I got a Ronin wallet. And then it’s like Metamask. I’ve got to buy I got to figure out how to get USD into like Ethereum. I’m like, purchasing three axies to play. All of a sudden, before you even get to start the game, you’re like I’ve spent four hours setting up wallets, like buried my seed phrase in the ground, in the backyard and spent a thousand dollars on three axes.

43:05 • Ryan
Now I’m in like, what the f*ck do I do now? Right. Like, we got a long way to go on this like barrier of entry and getting people in, but I think everybody’s moving that way. Ultimately as all of that process gets smoothed and it will get much smoother and we reduce the barrier to entry. These people that you their gaming first will maybe start to establish over the next decade that they’re actually like crypto native then. Right. Cause then they’re like, oh, I love this space and I’m in it. Once you’re in and you understand like the game economies, I feel like it my path, you’re like, this is like, there’s so much to unpack here. You’re like, oh, what does a dowel like, oh, I can participate in this, like, oh, it’s a Guild. Now I’m a part of this. Right. It opens up like all of these new elements to a gamer that don’t exist over here.

43:48 • Ryan
Right. I think that’s the fun of it. As this becomes much smoother, that funnel, that aperture will open up to the user base and then all of a sudden, yeah, those people will obviously be identified as like crypto native folks.

44:00 • Piers
Yeah. It’s interesting. You touched on the DAOs back there. I want to get your a quick response on, your perception of, is this an idealistic pipe dream that there’s going to be active community governance in games at scale? Do you think that there’s a clear path towards, like game audiences, being able to make meaningful decisions about the future of games and their economies, like curious where you stand on that before we go in a slightly different line.

44:29 • Ryan
Yeah. I think I always come from I’m just generally more of an optimist in all things like innovation and development. So like, yes, I do believe it. I also am grounded in the fact that like, look, like a community of people that are probably most likely a majority, if not all are not game developers, there’s like levels to these decision-making trees. Right? Like as a developer, you don’t really want to hear it. Like I have… I’ll give you an example to take a step back. Right. It’s like, people are like, Ryan do gifted memberships on YouTube. It’s like, why haven’t you done it yet? It’s like, okay, obviously we need to do that. It’s like no brainer, but you’re not taking this like other tree of decision making that needs to go into it of like, oh, like an abandoned checkout cart or like what we’re doing on the commerce side.

45:15 • Ryan
It’s like how your stack ranking these things, how it’s going to drive revenue. Like when you’re selling on the outside and you’re like, give me this, and you don’t have any understanding of like, how things are developed. It’s very much a turn off as a developer. You don’t want to like, do anything. Committee-based I’m like, I can’t imagine if I had to do building YouTube gaming based off of a committee-based dowel decision-making of what I should be doing, like puke, like not interested in at all. What I do love is, Hey, there’s these subset of products we are looking at, which ones are you interested in us developing. And that people vote on that. I love that. Right. There’s like, there’s levels to this stuff on how it’s going to work. I think developers that find that fine line where they feel like you’re getting real meaningful community participation.

46:02 • Ryan
They’re like in a lot of different ways they’re participating. Whether it’s like ownership of big items, whether it’s governance, all of this stuff, and you’re working hand in hand with them, I think you’ll find that fine line where developer and community are both happy. I, I am certain we will get to that point. I am bullish on it, but like I said, a lot of this stuff is, we’ve got to figure it out as we go. Like, you’re kind of, you’re building the plane while we’re in mid flight right now. It’s definitely not like a 747 yet.,

46:28 • Piers
Absolutely love to hear the optimism creeping through the changing gears somewhat. I wanted touch upon the fusion of these technologies with the creator economy component here, obviously YouTube kind of both empowers creators and is empowered by them. There’s kind of a symbiosis that play there and the new design space in terms of, monetization tools and basically having that direct path to your audience right. In a way that we haven’t necessarily seen yet where, you’re relying on that intermediary and middleman. I’m curious about how you’re thinking about, Web3 impacting the creator economy in this aspect of YouTube and beyond.

47:06 • Ryan
Yeah. I mean, it opens up a lot of things in the creator economy, right? One, you’re already seeing it with like Axie creators. Right. They’re participating in it, they’re not just earning off like the YouTube video or the Twitch stream. Now they’re earning off of SLP or what they’re doing with, breeding axies or getting people introduced to the community. So like, that’s one facet of it. I also started to think like with NFTs too, and is there a way, like a traditional, like artists, game artists can kind of get involved. I think of this as like… allow them to create a skin right. Put it up on an NFT marketplace inside of a game, right. Like just like right now, anybody can create art, put it up, and then have people transact on OpenSea, I would love to see games start to allow, like, here are the parameters for making a skin and you can release an AK 47 skin.

47:55 • Ryan
Right. It’s like, you can design it and you can go out there and go out to market. If you’re like a Raf Grassetti and like a really prominent artist and you get to go do your own, like weapon skin in there and people get to buy it. You’re like democratizing even like development to like in some aspect, at least like, the visual part of it. Right. I think it opens up what it means to be creators and a lot of different ways. That doesn’t even get into what does it mean if a creator launches a token. Right. And has, you know, participation in that? What does it mean? When a creator actually gives out kind of governance, and like what decisions should I make? What happens when creators can have like actual utility or do airdrops right. Some of the things that they don’t like, there’s a lot of things, there’s a lot of places you can take it and this isn’t just applicable to gaming.

48:40 • Ryan
Right. I think broader what Web3 can do to the creator economy is pretty significant, ? Yes. It goes back to like we have channel memberships on YouTube, right? It’s a monthly subscription to a specific channel behind that. A creator has a ton of autonomy, what they want to offer. They could offer discounts, to apparel. They could offer, meet and greets they can offer. In some ways they actually are providing utility to their channel membership to validate whatever the value is. Right. It’s like 4.99, and I’m gonna make sure I stuff up enough in here, or I’m going to make my membership 39.99, and I’m going to add more utility over here. Right. The question is, we’ll go down to what is already in a web2 environment versus what needs to be like web3 developed and how that would add more value in like, because the creator is setting a fixed price here and then trying to back into the utility, it offers to validate that price point, what happens when you open that up to, an open market and economy.

49:35 • Ryan
Anyway, I think it’s TBD on some of this stuff, but you can see where a lot of the really interesting things that are being developed in blockchain do change the dynamics of the creator economy. I’m actually pretty fascinated by that. Also last point on this one is like a lot of games marketing when they’re working with creators, right. Big established creators, particularly, but all creators of all sorts are they will, it’s like, Hey, create a, 10 videos around you. I’ll give you a hundred grand and create 10 videos around my game and stream, a hundred hours for the month of July. It’s like, that’s an exchange between the creator and the game publisher. It’s a marketing agreement they got, and this happens all the time, the question will be like, what happens now? When like a game creator, a streamer is like, you’ve got tokens, you have entities in the game and you are now very much coupled with the success of game that has like tremendous outside and can be like, incredible.

50:30 • Ryan
Right. It opens up the question of like, what does that, is that good? Is that bad? Is it indifferent? Like what does that all mean? Also explaining to creators like, oh, you own a token in this game. Like, I’m actually not giving you a pay check here to just play this game. I’m going to give you assets and a token inside of my game. And like, what does that mean? How do we educate creators on that? So, dude, it’s going to open up a Pandora’s box on the creator economy. The question is like, what comes out first? You know?

50:57 • Yan
Yeah, no, that makes sense. And, and, we’re obviously super bullish on this as well. And, and so as you have like further development and in propagation of the creator economy games and these immersive online experiences, and, often that can be seen as kind of a dystopian future where everyone is just, mega plugged into their online worlds. I was wondering, do we evolve into like some ready player, one type of kind of society? Or what are your thoughts there? And in the long run,

51:25 • Ryan
I don’t know, man, I’m probably going to take more of a measured approach, like I I’m b******t, taking a long perspective on it, but some of these things need to play out, need to be iterated on what people accept versus reject is still like to be determined. I’m not sure I’m ready to sit here and talk about where we’re going in, like ready player one, kind of community and society.

51:53 • Piers
All right. Well, we’ll take it. I’m curious, like when you were affected, I guess on your whole journey through YouTube and what not and the whole games industry, like what’s some of the biggest takeaways on the whole have been for you.

52:06 • Ryan
Sorry. Can you elaborate on that? Yeah. I mean,

52:08 • Piers
The time you spent at YouTube, like what some of the key learning some of the key takeaways have been, and, things that you’ll probably carry with you moving forward or at least bear in mind from those learnings.

52:19 • Ryan
Yeah. There’s a, there’s a lot, when I first came into to YouTube gaming, I was so like us centric or Western market centric, actually us centric wanting to see Western markets. Right. It was just like, what was happening in the U S was like, what was the world? And that was like very misguided, right. I started to really appreciate over time, how much regional and country specific nuance there is to games. What devices people have access to from like consoles to PC, to mobile devices, what kind of internet connectivity that they have, what kind of societies you’re developing for. Right. There’s a lot of nuances between Southeast Asia, India, Brazil, the U S and like what games they’re playing, what games that they’re watching, how they’re participating in those game economies. I started traveling a lot at YouTube, right. going to like 35, 40 some countries meeting with gamers and, developers from all around the world.

53:11 • Ryan
So, like I became that much more of an appreciation of like global nuance of how the game ecosystem operates. That definitely has probably been if I had to say like the one takeaway from YouTube was that because it was the first time I was in a global role, right. Where I really was taking an effect of everything that was happening in each country and cared deeply about it. From that, you don’t make macro level decisions. Right. You have to very much make, not even region specific. Right? Like coming up with an APAC strategy, doesn’t even make sense because you actually need to consider that South Korea and Japan are even very different from how they’re participating in the games ecosystem. I think just the global nature that it provided for me was really helpful in the way that I think about things. It’s also helped me even be very much more like clear-minded on Web3, right.

54:01 • Ryan
And looking at trends. I think the other thing is a lot of sometimes, the U S oftentimes is not fully paying attention to what’s happening in other markets that ended up actually setting the trend, which will inevitably come to the U S. I think, and I mean, this is more from gamers, obviously, like developers and stuff are thinking this, but like gamers, I don’t think fully appreciate models and concepts that end up in their games where they actually originated from, we’re so like in the U S like, we think the United States is the world. Right. And so I think gamers do. I’m always like, whether you’re on Twitter or wherever, like, make sure you don’t have this, like, this bias of only listening to what’s happening in our country. Right. In the U S sorry, not talking to your peers, but it, and I think that’s really important too.

54:47 • Ryan
I, that got me, like, I got my head out of my ass very early on at YouTube running gaming, because I did start that way. And so that’s my biggest takeaway. It’s allowed me to appreciate the gaming industry, like so much more and very much wake up.

55:01 • Yan
Yeah. I think you have a real unique kind of perspective based on your experience, and then just the position and all the kinds of verticals you touch across the gaming space. So, with that in mind, I was wondering if, what do you think are potentially, or is potentially the biggest threat to the success of blockchain gaming?

55:19 • Ryan
Oh, I kind of feel like it’s inevitable, right. It’s really like to what scale and what impact, like it’s going to be. I have, like, I have, I mean, quite literally zero doubt that is going to serve as a subsection of the gaming industry. Like, it just will be a part of the games industry. I think the biggest threat to it is how weed out bad actors from this industry. Right. Because you kind of don’t have the same ability to do that. Like you do in like a Web2 environment. Right. Like, bad actors could be a variety of things. Bad actors could be people, maliciously making games to like rug people and get money. Bad actors could be like, when you have played or earned mechanics and money involved, cheating is not as going, first of all, it’s going to be, it’s going to run rampant, right?

56:04 • Ryan
Like people are going to be highly motivated to develop cheats and game developers are going to have to play constant whack-a-mole on how they make sure that does not enter in the ecosystem. Right. Look at like how much call duty has struggled with this. This is a major established franchise war zone. Vanguard is generating a ton of money and they are constantly dealing with it. Okay. Now, all of a sudden you add that, like I lost that game and I lost, a thousand dollars because I lost that game that is not going to fly. Right. I think these two things, bad actors in general, in the ways that they manifest, there’s going to be the biggest deterrent. I feel like we probably don’t talk about it enough because like the games haven’t gotten to a place and the audience hasn’t gotten to a place where these things are like, talked about a lot, but it will be, and we will have to figure out as like an overall industry, how we address that stuff, you don’t want to be banned for, right.

56:51 • Ryan
Like these interests, you can’t ban me. Like, I own these things. It’s like, no, if you’re like cheating, like you’re going to have to get like, bounce. Like I like how Axie kind of handle some of this stuff. It doesn’t mean that like, you’re going to avoid all of this stuff. We need to be able to handle bad actors in any way that they kind of show their face.

57:08 • Piers
I think that’s a great point. I also think there’s like, kind of a peripheral factors, which aren’t directly game related. Like, when we do introduce the real money economies, the reporting requirements, the compliance infrastructure and things like that, the regulatory approach to it, a lot of this stuff is still really unclear. Obviously the ground is shifting beneath people’s feet, but curious how you reflect on that side of things as well, and the impact that things like regulation, the distribution problems, some of those that are beyond like the actual game level are gonna, are going to play out.

57:39 • Ryan
Yeah. I was, I didn’t know. We could use the R word on this podcast. Yeah. I think regulations is, people use it as like a counterpoint and one that should be really feared, but to be honest with you as the look, as it starts to roll out in countries and how we kind of look at it from a macro global perspective, I think that provides more stability and understanding of the marketplace, like right now, because it is of the wild west. People don’t know how touch it or interact with it or are scared to do it, and obviously you have a lot of adventurous spirited entrepreneurs that are all over this place. Look, when regulation comes in, first of all, it takes forever for most of these governments to do anything or even understand it. Right. Like we don’t even have a lot of people within our tech industry that even understand what Web3 is.

58:23 • Ryan
I think it’s going to take just cause you have to really understand it to start to apply a lot of policy to it. But, you’re starting to see a focus on it, particularly, especially in the U S as well, I think it’s going to happen. I don’t think it’s actually a bad thing. I think it will provide clarity to the space and, people will understand where the boundaries and fences are and that’s not a bad thing. I feel like, yeah, it’d be like a, pretty volatile until that happens, but I, I actually kind of welcome it and hopefully we can kind of continue to work alongside, that process and make sure that, there’s a full understanding of it. That does happen, it’s in a way that continues to allow for this to be a thriving ecosystem and economy.

59:04 • Piers
Absolutely makes a ton of sense. Let’s say there’s some developers or teams that are listening to this. They’ve been encouraged by your enthusiasm for the sector. They’ve got past the part of, bearing the seed phrases in the backyard to quote and, they want to engage this space. Like what would be some of the, key points of advice that you want to communicate to them about navigating this sector and framing this whole thing.

59:28 • Ryan
Yeah. Look, I think everybody on both sides, like whether you’re like, dug in on the Web2 side or you’re like Web3 Twitter maximalist, and you’re like, can’t stop talking about it. I think it’s, this is a great, like anytime that we can talk about growing the industry and technology shifts that it can occur in this industry should be welcome with open arms. We should not be afraid to innovate. We should not be afraid to have level-headed conversations. We should not be afraid to be like very open-minded to both sides. My desire in all of this is just to be everyone take a more measured and balanced approach to the space and make it be far more productive and the communication that we’re having with each other about it, right. Not be so dismissive be open-minded. That’s all like any conversation I would have with anybody anywhere, whether it’s a, a C level person at a major established AAA to an entity developer, that’s like getting cited and make their first game on the blockchain is take a measured approach.

01:00:28 • Ryan
Be open-minded, let’s talk about the experiences that we can create for gamers. That’s always a good thing for the industry, right? Like we’re all gamers. We want the best things for the gaming community. We have to understand that every game, with 2.7 billion gamers, everybody’s different, everybody wants different things from the gaming industry. Nobody has like, there’s no broad strokes. You can take there’s a one size fits all. Having an appreciation for that and, be open-minded. And so I’m hopeful. That’s like where the dialogue continues to go over the next two years, because I’m not, particularly ecstatic on how it’s going today. I’m hopeful that changes and I’m optimistic that I will,

01:01:05 • Yan
It’s certainly been the case in myself as well, where you’ll get good advice. And, and after, a bunch of time you’ll realize it was, it seems obvious in hindsight, but at the time it was incredibly useful. So, along that same vein of muttering, like what’s one thing that’s kind of become clear to you since you’ve embarked on your crypto journey that you wish you’d known before.

01:01:24 • Ryan
It might even be what I just said. I think it’s like, I think it’s like, look, people’s opinions are allowed to change. Right. And that was kinda what I accepted. Right. Like we talked about in the beginning, you’re like, where did you start your crypto journey? I was like, I didn’t really give a s**t about defy, like straight up man. Like, obviously that’s something you got really passionate about. I saw the application of it and like my opinion changed, like, and it’s okay. Right. So, like, I think just in general, we’re constantly learning and be understanding that people’s opinions are allowed to change. Over time as new information is presented to them. I’m hopeful that like, everybody takes that perspective, whether you’re like full, deep red pill or, you’re just on the outside looking in trying to understand the tech in a better way, like allow for people’s opinions to change a lot for yourself to have your opinions change over time as well to, no,

01:02:11 • Piers
I love that kind of heading into the closing questions now as well. I’m very curious, like out of all the books that you’ve ever read, which is the one that dear to heart, this resonates with you the most, as it.

01:02:20 • Ryan
Relates to Web3, like, are we just going to do like snow crash, Ready Player, One like cliche.

01:02:25 • Piers
Yeah. No, we don’t need to stay too nerdy on this. Something that resonated with you personally and has been useful in your journey. Not specifically game related.

01:02:34 • Ryan
I don’t know that I, like, I don’t know, maybe this is a bad answer, but I’m not sure, like, that I can take a book and say that it’s been like, incredibly useful to my journey. Like, I don’t know. I don’t know that I really have an answer to that, to be honest with you. All.

01:02:50 • Piers
Right. All right.

01:02:51 • Ryan
I like what’s yours. Like, what book did you read that was so impactful that like changed your journey in this space.

01:02:58 • Piers
Base, but in just genuinely a book called star maker by I left stapled in, it was written in the 1930s. It’s like, just had f*****g the imaginative list you should. It’s incredible. It’s a really interesting book and I read it at a time of life where it kind of changed the way I looked at a lot of things, but yeah, maybe one, a bit closer to home then favorite game ever. That’s stuck with you over the edge.

01:03:22 • Ryan
Yeah. I feel like there’s probably games that have been more impactful to my life trajectory than anything I’ve read. Honestly, I think it was probably Counter-Strike because Counter-Strike was really my love for sports and video games came together to see high-level competition in e-sports. Right. It was like where I kind of had a much more appreciation for games, ? Cause I kinda always looked at like games as just like an outlet for fun. I love I’m like, I love sports so much. Those two worlds really collided for me. Right. So, but quake or Counterstrike would probably be the ones that were the most impactful.

01:03:53 • Yan
Yeah. Part of adulting is obviously, having to give up time away from games and some other things. Are you still playing any games now? Yeah.

01:04:02 • Ryan
Yeah. I mean, yeah. Obviously I’ve got a family and a kid and saw my time is limited in gaming, but yeah. I mean, I still play balance. Like the problem with that I have right now too, it’s like, I really struggled not being good at a video game and as you play less, it becomes really harder. I really just like, over-index on playing balance when I can. Yeah. Look, dude, like the switch is your best friend when you’re traveling. Honestly like breath of the wild, I can’t wait for breath of the wild to come in. Like I’ve had to find comfort in portability gaming as well too. Valor is the one that I will sit down on my PC and still play to this day. And like my friends played and stuff. So that helps too. I still have like the big dad energy where I can show up and play games.

01:04:46 • Ryan
Every once in a while the problem is like, I get really tired, easily, like three games of valor in and I’m like cashed on game number four. That’s the issue. My ass is asleep by like nine 30 to a whole different life.

01:04:58 • Piers
Ryan, tell us what rank you are in Valorant. Oh, we have to edit it out of shame.

01:05:00 • Ryan
No, no. I’m platinum. It’s fine. I like platinum too. Right now. I was almost diving and I was at the higher end of platinum three and I lost like 11 games in a row and oh, and the thing about 11 games, like over the course of like two weeks of playing. They imagine how demoralizing it was like, you get on play three all and that kept happening. Like, dude, I’m down bad right now in platinum. Yeah, I’m still holding on to platinum too. These diamond aspirations now feel very far away.

01:05:27 • Piers
Character building we’ll have to play sometime.

01:05:30 • Ryan
When I got to go, dude, I’m done, man, I’m retiring, I’m done playing video games, man. It’s, I’m going to be out, I’m out of the game. Until I’m at that level, I’m in it.

01:05:40 • Piers
It’s just to smash up your PC at that point. Yeah, I feel you, I’m also curious then just beyond games or it might include a game, but what you would regard as the most impactful digital experience you’ve ever had.

01:05:53 • Ryan
Jeez man, I’ve had the most impactful digital experience that I’ve ever had. This might be really lame. And, but this is honestly it. I feel like you’re going to make fun of me, but going back to Counter-Strike I first started playing on dial up. Right. You have like an absurd, like 250 paying and you’re playing Counter-Strike when I got the look, when I got the cable modem and my ping drops like 40-50, and I was just like snatching kids souls. Counter-Strike because I had such a lower pain that really was right. Like, I can give you like the first time I put a VR headset on and s**t like that was obviously really cool and transformative, but I’ll tell you like, honestly, I, I remember being on cloud nine when I got to cable modem from dial up and maybe I’m dating myself here, but like truly that was like a transformational experience for me because the fact that I was like, we don’t need AOL anymore to dial up.

01:06:40 • Ryan
I was like, we could just have a cable modem and use internet Explorer and instant messenger. I can have this well paying. I remember telling my mom. I’m like, why would she get cable modem? With my PC, we would run like the ethernet cords, like up through the vents and s**t. I could have actual ethernet plugged into my computer upstairs, drilling holes in the wall. Honestly I think that really was because that opened up my whole world to the internet and I became so much more fascinated, like, messing around with like, Dreamweaver and some of these other like, Photoshop and different like product suites as well. I really do think that was like the, a meaningful moment, but I can give you like a little more cliche answer of like putting a VR headset on those first time. I mean, that was pretty wild.

01:07:19 • Ryan
Did that at like Google when I first started and they had like the classic one where they had you on like a look, the wooden beam and looking around and stuff. That was, I mean, that was also like, it was pretty like, mind boggling as well. Maybe those two experiences, but I’m telling you man, cable modem, big day in the house.

01:07:37 • Yan
Yeah. It’s funny when peers ask that question, I thought about what my answer would be. And it’s basically the same thing. Cause I always played console shooters. The transition from going out from halo one and only land to halo two and like I can play with people and they’re not in the room with you. This is nuts. Yeah,

01:07:54 • Ryan
Totally. Yeah. It’s like, it opens up your whole world. You’re like all of a sudden you got like, some like buddy in New York and you’re in California, they were like gaming with that. You’ve never met before and they’re like, you have become your best friend. That’s really like embracing what, the gaming industry and community ended up being. I love that.

01:08:08 • Piers
Love that comes to mind. No, that’s great fun. Well, yeah, Brian, it’s been a pleasure having you on. I wanted to you the opportunity for any closing remarks you might want to give and if not just where people can follow along with what you’re up to and how it’s best to keep tabs.

01:08:23 • Ryan
Yeah, no, honestly, my advice is if you’re in this space and you’re listening and you’re in and web three gaming in whatever way, shape or form, like good for you, keep fighting the good fight. Don’t listen to outside noise, like continue to be inspired, continue to innovate and be curious. If you want to follow like, my sh*t posting, it’s a twitter.com/fwiz. That’s pretty much all you need to know as far as keeping updated with me, if you want, the more, PC path LinkedIn’s always works as well. That’s like, where I curate my non sh*t posts, I really am like the mean where it’s like me on Twitter versus me on LinkedIn. You know, it’s like very real. Yes. I love that.

01:09:05 • Piers
So I got for you though. I love that. Well, Ryan, it’s been a pleasure and I think we’re all very excited to have, your enthusiasm and energy focused on this space and glad that someone in your positions as open-minded, as you are and truly exploring this whole sector. We’re all very excited about it.

01:09:21 • Ryan
Thanks for having me boys, keep you to keep fighting the good fight and we’ll stay in touch and keep moving the industry forward.

01:09:28 • Piers
Thanks a lot, man. Really.

01:09:29 • Ryan
Appreciate it. You got it.

Ryan “Fwiz” Wyatt: Head of YouTube Gaming on the Future of Blockchain Games, Web3, and the Creator Economy

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