Another Wednesday, another episode of Blockchain Gaming World and what an episode.
As I trailed to paid subscribers in yesterday’s email, BCGW #159 with Animoca Brands’ chairman Yat Siu is now available from all the usual podcast distribution platforms.
It’s a real cracker, as — having spoken to Yat a couple of times previously — I hoped it would be. However, what I had planned to be a more compact episode in which I would attempt to stop Yat spiralling into philosophical discourse turned exactly into that. Perhaps I shouldn’t have kicked off with a question combining Yat’s recent article about John Locke with the rise of meme coins.
It was supposed to be a nice intro — a funny jutxaposition — but Yat (rightly) hit it straight out the park, by arguing meme coins are the purest incarnation of Locke’s liberal ideals.
Still, I am happy that as well as such discussions, we did also talk about specifics, notably what Animoca has learned from projects such as its REVV and TOWER ecosystems, which haven’t captured widespread attention, as well as the ongoing efforts of the higher profile Mocaverse and The Sandbox.
Yet, having spent most of today working on the video editing and transcription, the real joy has come from thinking through the arguments once again. During a podcast’s recording, I don’t have time to deconstruct each answer as it happens. I very rarely prepare set questions, so I’m always thinking ahead what next to ask. It’s only after the event that the deeper themes start to emerge.
As it happens, I don’t agree with everything Yat said; neither in terms of web3 as an anti-monopolistic force, nor its power to allow communities to tell their own stories, although I think there is some truth in that process.
But what really caught my attention was his discussion around the TOWER token, which was given to players of Animoca’s web2 tower defence games. Yat explained that even though these players were gifted tokens and NFTs, they didn’t really understand their value as assets because they were web2 gamers, not web3 gamers. Giving stuff away from free didn’t help in this regard. Instead, Animoca needs to add more native web3 gamers into that ecosystem to boost the education process, notably via trading assets.
And that struck me as a profound learning. The sticking point isn’t about whether or not we enable gamers to seamlessly onboard to blockchain with email wallets and gas-less transactions etc.
Our task is much more subtle; it’s to teach gamers that in-game assets are independent, tradable and in some cases also valuable. And that games with such assets are enjoyable in new and innovative ways too.
Maybe meme coins are the best examplar of the spirit of the age, after all.
You can check out the full (lightly edited) transcript of our conversation over at BlockchainGamer.biz.
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Calendar
Dookey Dash: Unclogged starts closed beta — 6th March
Shrapnel’s STX1.2 event goes live — 7th March
Metabolt’s public NFT sale starts — 7th March
Arbitrum launches Arbitrum Arcade — 11th March
Wemade’s Night Crows goes live via app stores — 12th March
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