Amos: 0:00

The problem with so many of these Web3 games is people are playing for money. They're not playing because they enjoy the game.

Joeri: 0:07

Hello everyone and welcome to the Web3 CMO Stories podcast. My name is Joeri Billast and I'm your podcast host, and today I'm excited to be joined by Amos from the other side of the world. How are you, amos? Yeah, very well. Thanks for having me, Joeri. Yeah, guys, if you don't know it, but I'm here in Lisbon, it's evening and Amos is really early in the morning for him, so I appreciate you coming on my podcast, amos.

Joeri: 0:43

But if you're now wondering who is Amos, amos Whitewolf is a full stack JavaScript Python developer, specializing in scalable architecture and web products. He has experience in working with solidity, web 3.0 technology and experience developing algorithmic training systems. In his time off, you can find him in the gym. I think he is also a gamer and he's obsessed, I think, with nfts, if I am correctly, um, if I correct information, and he's also a gamer and he's obsessed, I think, with NFTs, if I am correctly, if I have correct information, and he's also known for being an early Axie Infinity world number one, and he's the founder of Pyrean XP. Amos, welcome and let's. I will just dive in straight and you can. As we go, we will, we will learn more about you, but you have been deeply involved in Web3 gaming, I know. And so what was the moment that made you realize the biggest challenge was not the tech, but was the onboarding problem?

Amos: 1:41

Yeah, man. So I think gaming has an onboarding problem itself. And then web3 gaming it's kind of like 100x that. So gaming itself it's like it's all locked up. So every single one of the kind of like big games is capturing a lot of the attention of the people and it's really hard to take that attention into a newly launched game and that sort of stuff. So that's sort of gaming's onboarding problem into new games.

Amos: 2:11

But then Web3, as everyone knows, has its own onboarding problem. So you stick to industries that have significant onboarding problems together and you get that kind of like 100x On the gaming side of things. We have 3.5 billion gamers in the world and we have, I think there's something like 1.5 billion sorry, 1.5 million gamers on Web3. So what we're trying to do there is obviously fix that, get some of these 3.5 billion gamers that are in Web2 and bring them into web 3 so that they can understand the value of web 3 and become kind of long-term gamers in web 3 yeah, I, I love that, but because, indeed, you know, the gaming world is so big and then there is this web 3 part, which is small at the moment but there is a lot.

Joeri: 3:04

I see a lot of potential like web3 gaming. You know, if you look at the whole web3 space, gaming has a lot of potential, and I know your mission is to onboard 1 million fortnite gamers into web3. So then I am wondering what is the key mind shift that web2 gamers need to make to see the value in Web 3 gaming?

Amos: 3:27

yeah, Joeri, that's a really good question. And the? The thing with the? The thing with the web 3 gamers, sorry, the thing with the web 2 gamers is they. They haven't been given any value, right? So every single industry we're talking ubisoft, all these big players have kind of seen the opportunity to make more money using blockchain technology and they went at it from a very web 2 lens where it was really difficult or like they didn't actually think about how they could give value to these web2 gamers and actually give value to the things that they were selling them. They just saw, hey, we can sell an item, a digital asset, whatever it happens to be, for 10 times, 50 times, 100 times what they were already charging, but then give them no additional value in that. So Web2 gamers, as you can imagine, they're not getting the value from the crypto side of things and the blockchain side of things and they're getting that value taken from them. They're getting charged the same. They're getting the same value, but getting charged so much more. So what is the shift? What needs to happen there to onboard all these people is to actually give them value. Like there, there aren't all of these gamers that are kind of running the show in the web3 space. So it's all kind of um.

Amos: 4:56

Generally there are kind of exceptions with these projects, but generally it's it's people that saw an opportunity come from the crypto space. They're not a gamer. They saw the narrative and they're just kind of like they've just jumped in. But generally it's people that saw an opportunity come from the crypto space. They're not a gamer. They saw the narrative and they're just kind of like they've just jumped in and eventually they will get it. Eventually they'll become gamers, hopefully, and be able to give value to those Web2 gamers. But yeah, I think that's the shift. Like there needs to be the value up front. These people need to see what is happening there and I think Ax, axi, infinity actually did this really, really well and I know they cop a lot of slack from a lot of the places.

Amos: 5:31

But you've you bought, you bought the nfts or you're part of the community, you earned things, you had ownership. It, like a lot of people said, it like wasn't an amazing game. I thought it was a fantastic game. It's just where you were looking at it. And if you go take that sort of game to someone and you say, oh, this is the best game in the world. It's like for a traditional Web2 gamer? No, it's not, but for a card gamer, that makes a hell of a lot of sense, because that is the genre that it's kind of more closely related to. It makes sense. It's a card strategy game, and then you're not comparing it to the AAA games. You're comparing it to a card strategy game and you can have just as much fun with a card game, playing it with another person, like at a pub or at your kind of like local gaming space.

Amos: 6:22

So, yeah, and then what we're doing is we're we're doing. We're doing that. We're giving value to these gamers. We're not trying to take away from them, we're not trying to change what they're already doing. They're already playing games, they're already loving these games, and what we want to do is or what we're doing is, we're putting a layer on top of that. It's a kind of meta layer of sorts, but we're putting a layer on top of that. It's a kind of meta layer of sorts, but we're putting a layer on top of that. We're asking them to do things. We're giving users agency to choose what they want to do within the game, and then we're very easily just showing them the value of crypto blockchain technology like piece by piece, rather than hey, you need to jump into this whole new world, which is complicated, so that's what we're doing yeah, I love that.

Joeri: 7:07

The value first, and then they will come. Yeah, of course, indeed, and but then you see on the other side that these traditional gaming giants, they are still hesitant right to fully embrace blockchain. So what do you think that is holding them back?

Amos: 7:26

yeah, man, I mean, well, it's like one domino tips and the rest fall right. So I feel like it's very comparable to say, I don't know countries, reserves and bitcoin like not every country has bitcoin which one's going to kind of get in, which one's going to be the domino that makes it all fall. And then we have the us and trump administration talking about strategic bitcoin reserves and all this sort of stuff and if that happens, like every single other country is going to need to do this right, so it's definitely a risk for them. Yeah, it's, it's a risk for them. They're dealing with their whole community and this sort of stuff to actually I don't do that, and they're risking their whole community to I don't know, fail, not like them, all this sort of stuff, and that's just a risk of the community and that sort of thing, but the risk of them actually stuffing it up is huge as well.

Amos: 8:26

You start putting kind of financial markets in games and allowing pretty much any trader, anyone that's on these meme coins, any pun with bots and all this sort of stuff, to interact with that. They've got to worry about people getting scammed on twitter. They've got to worry about, I know, people external to them dumping on their player base, like, regardless of how things, like what they actually do there, they're adding a whole lot of problems and they have to financially monetize in a Web3 native way, which is another risk, because they're already making money, right, they're already making money, they're already profitable, it's already working. So there needs to be some evidence to them that this new model is going to make them more money or give them a stronger community or make that community longer with them, right? So I think that's what's really holding those big players back. They're interested.

Amos: 9:24

Every single one's researching it, like we had sony release their blockchain. I think it's yes, sonium, or yeah, they released their blockchain, they're getting in, they're talking about it, they want in and they've all done this testing in private. It's ready to go. They could execute on it fast. It's the whole thing, this. I know you compare this to like AI as well. Chatgpt came out. Every single other big player came out with like their own AI thing, and there's this whole Porsche VC funding poured in everything. So that's going to happen.

Joeri: 9:56

Absolutely. I like that comparison with Bitcoin and with AI. Maybe I can give you another comparison. You know, before COVID, you, you know, we were always doing it. You know this in real life meetings, seeing people face to face, and I wanted to do something online. They were like why do you want to do something online? And then it just happened that you know everyone needed to follow and so, yeah, something like that will probably happen here too. Now, yeah, let's talk about so the play to earn model that you have of them, of those have struggled with sustainability, and now I'm wondering how do you, with parian xp, are, with your approach, different and what is the long-term vision?

Amos: 11:49

yeah, man. So I guess, in in those days and kind of learning, I had the advantage of actually being a player. I actually liked the game and I got very, very good at the game. As you mentioned earlier in the episode. I thought that game was fun. I actually genuinely thought that game was fun. I played it for money, but that money wasn't even comparable to my full-time job or anything like that. It was just like an extra nice thing that we'll get into it a bit later, but it was just kind of like an extra nice thing. Now, what's interesting about that is I thought the game was fun. So even without that, I still would have been trying to compete, still trying to get to the top. That was like an added bonus.

Amos: 12:29

And what's interesting about that is the problem with so many of these Web3 games is people are playing for money. They're not playing because they enjoy the game. Maybe they're not a gamer, maybe, like, maybe they're literally just come on because they can earn a few bucks doing this thing. And then the company is taking a risk or the dow or whatever happens to be is taking a risk on those players actually becoming long-term paying players and all this sort of stuff that's all based around. Is this thing fun? And they're kind of risking. Hey, are we going to be able to make this thing fun by the time our token starts declining and our economy starts crashing? Essentially and this is true for a lot of DeFi projects and a lot of the projects in the space and the matter of how the tokens go out always changes and it's always evolving.

Amos: 13:21

But what makes us different is we're not trying to build a AAA game. We're not trying to take people away from the fun thing they're already doing. We are making an application that makes their experience more fun. It gamifies their experience further and adds financial incentives to it. So what would be a comparison that you could make that does a similar thing? Well, strava or Duolingo, one for fitness, one for learning a language, and it's gamifying, something that, like people love running, like people, people love language, people love learning. But having that gamification layer on top, it just enhances the entire experience. You get to see, this is your history, this is how you've been improving all this sort of stuff, and we're doing the exact same thing for these AAA games. We're creating a questing layer on top of these AAA games where you can see your stats you can see your improvement. But also you have a higher level of competition and fun on top of something that is already fun and that's awesome.

Amos: 14:30

And again, I think the financial side of things it's like personally Australia think the financial side of things it's like personally Australia is a very kind of heavy gambling country it is, and something that makes kind of watching sport more fun is kind of upping the ante on that sport in some way as well and putting like a bet on, like a sports bet or something like this, and then you go to a game, even if you don't watch the sport. If you got $50 on there or something like that, you are engaged in that thing, which is that's not going to change your life, but it's like really like it just increases the enjoyment of it. So that's just a comparison to what making something a little bit more financial does. Even if it's a $2 bet and you win like $4, you still get some joy out of that thing. You didn't work for that. You got to back yourself and get rewarded for it.

Joeri: 15:22

Yeah, I love that insight you know and how you explain all that. Indeed, if you just go in for the money, money and then you know it's not fun, then I don't think it will take long that you will. But yeah, I mentioned it in the beginning, yeah, go ahead.

Amos: 15:38

Amos, Do you play any games yourself?

Joeri: 15:42

I used to play some games, but I'm not really like games. If you are just talking just before, we were starting the recording of the episode about the central land and about so I've been doing some stuff in the metaverse, not really games, but it was more like a game. You know, being there, and I always like to gamify. As a marketer, I like to gamify things because when it's gamified, you want to win and it gives competition, you have something to talk about and you get. Yeah, you continue because you just want to win, because there is a challenge, right, yeah, makes sense. So I'm talking about competitivity. Yeah, so you, you are a winner because you were an early x infinity world number one, which is amazing, and so I'm curious how did that experience shape your perspective of the future of competitive factory gaming?

Amos: 16:37

Yeah. So again, being a player and being a competitive player, what I really saw there was that monetary piece. It really doesn't take a lot on the monetary side for someone to get a lot of joy out of it. So our head, or our game designer at Perion, he got into shrapnel when shrapnel was doing kind of seasonal pushes to do payouts on a leaderboard and what was really interesting is this guy has a great job, but he has a great job, makes good money and he's competing on this shrapnel leaderboard.

Amos: 17:17

Now he missed out on the payout spot by one person. He got dropped. If he'd won that last game that he was playing he would have got a payout. And he's telling me about it. He's telling me about I'm like, oh man, like that sucks, like blah, blah, and then it got to like how much was the payout? And he's like, oh, 20 cents. And I'm like, oh, like.

Amos: 17:42

But I guess that's what's so interesting about it is, even having such a small payout, he doesn't need to come first to get that really high, because he can come in the payout zone of the top thousand people or something to be striving for. And that's what he was striving for and he wasn't disappointed in the money. I don't think he was disappointed in. He missed what he was aiming for, which was to get some money from doing something he loves anyway. And what he was aiming for, which was to get some money from doing something he loves anyway, and what he was so excited for, even though it was only 20 cents, is getting paid for playing a game in some sense makes you a professional right, because you get paid for doing something and that turns you into a professional player in some sense, even if it's small. It's like I got paid for doing something I love and that turns you into a professional player in some sense, even if it's small. It's like I got paid for doing something I love and that's across everything.

Joeri: 18:32

So I think that's also what he was kind of a little bit disappointed in missing out on but, yeah, I can imagine you know it's like an objective and so, yeah, it's everything, with everything that you're doing, which starts as fun and you get paid for it at a certain moment it's really, really exciting. Now web3 gaming is still like in a niche. It's really small compared to traditional gaming, so what do you think is the missing piece that will take it mainstream?

Amos: 19:01

the missing piece is web2 gamers need to understand the value in Web 3. So we talked about this earlier and people in Web 3, they're just shouting from the rooftops this is amazing technology, blah, blah, blah. And it is. It is amazing technology and it is the future of gaming. But to tell someone about it is not doing a whole lot, because when a Web2 gamer comes in and looks under the surface, they're like what is going on here? This is not what I expected. Why are these people just shouting about how amazing this thing is? So the missing piece is people need to build something to show the Web2 gamers what this is and what this space is, what that value is, what it can bring to them. Because, yeah, it's like I don't know. My mom always told me it's like actions speak louder than words. Right, and they need to see it. They need to see it for themselves. You can't just say this is going to be an amazing thing. It's coming soon. The metaverse is coming soon for digital assets and ownership coming soon. They need to see it.

Joeri: 20:09

they need to see, they need to see the value. Absolutely, when I was starting, you know, when metaverse was more like a hype, with these events in the metaverse for business owners or founders or you know people coming together with, for marketers, when they came in there and they get, like this, vr headsets on, it was like, wow, this is cool, but if you never put this, you know theseets on, you don't know what is the feeling. So, yeah, definitely agree. And then with XP, xp. gg, you're creating a layer of engagement and incentivization. Could you break down how this model works and, yeah, why it is different from exist loyalty programs?

Amos: 20:52

cool. So existing existing loyalty programs, they're a grant. If you go to any of these questing platforms, a lot of these engagement layers, they are a grind. It doesn't matter if that's for some tokens where there's some points that are going to transfer to an airdrop every time it happens. Every time an airdrop happens, people like I didn't get enough money. I put so much time into this. This was such a grind and people have done the thing and they're not getting what they what they want out of it or what they're expecting out of it. What we've done is we've created an entire game of an engagement layer. So this is a little bit hard to explain.

Amos: 21:33

But a gamer goes in and they have agency to choose, essentially missions. Now they're things that they would normally do within a game. If you were to compare this to a sport like golf, it's like cool, I'm going to get, I know I'm going to get. I know 200 meters with my driver in the next hour, so that could be sort of a mission. Then you get given those missions and you have to select between them. Then you pick one and then you get to see the reward that you get. But you also get to actually pick the reward that you get, so that is leaderboard points. The reward that you get, so that is leaderboard points. In our section you could have this as say, I know any sort of points, so it could be like airdrop points or anything like that, and you get to choose what happens on on the, on the, on the reward. So we've got more.

Amos: 22:24

I think there's more than 200 rewards and they range from increase your own leaderboard points by 50, decrease someone else's leaderboard points. You get protection to stop other people from decreasing your leaderboard points, and it's a full game. There's buffs, there's things that last for 24 hours and increase your points, generation or protection or whatever happens to be for that period of time. And then you go lock it in, you go do the mission and then, once you've done the mission, say I got my 200 meter drive and I got my reward for that. That gets executed, essentially, and that changes where my position is on the leaderboard.

Amos: 23:09

Now what's really interesting about that is that's a game that isn't dependent on a player's skill. There is part of it that is dependent on a player's skill, but it's a combination of skill. At the game which is Fortnite, it's a combination of skill at the game at Paragon XP and that skill of understanding what they need within the game to increase their agency. And then it's also just time time spent playing both Fortnite and Paragon XP to move themselves up that leaderboard, which is something I've always been really passionate about.

Amos: 23:50

I think there's kind of games of luck entirely, and it's not. It's not fun because you don't have any way where you can alter the outcome of that. And then there's games of skill, which it's great and all, but if you're not in that top 0.01%, you can never actually make any money. It's very difficult to have a job. You have to use other skills, like potentially, your content creation skills, so you can be a streamer. That is like a personality streamer or something like that. It's very, very, very difficult. So what we've created is sort of a balance between these two things of skill and luck and fully gamified this platform. So, yeah, it's, uh, it's comparable to some of these engagement platforms, but it is also very, very different. It's sort of it's, it's, it's comparable, but not the same yes, that that's how you need it to be.

Joeri: 24:47

It is different, so comparable, but not the same, that it still stands out. Now Web3 is all about community, or community is a huge part of Web3, I would say so also for you. Yeah, for you. How do you keep the engagement level, how you keep that high and you prevent Web3 gamers from churning after the hype goes down? Because I've seen that a lot, that you have this hype and then after that the community is dead. So I'm curious yeah.

Amos: 25:18

So I guess there's two parts. The first part is it's fun. It's fun, you're playing things anyway. There are huge communities of gamers. They're in Discord, they're playing their favorite game, they're chatting with people every day and this is the norm. They're not churning, it's just a normal thing for them. They're spending time together, they're socializing and they're not there to make money, they're there to have friends and all that sort of stuff. So that's the first kind of like advantage there. The second piece is a lot of these Web3 communities.

Amos: 25:52

It's like you're doing token farming, token farming, token farming and then it's over, and a lot of the people that are doing this token farming, they aren't the people that are going to be the long-term users of that particular platform. So as soon as it's over, then they just drop off. It's not useful to them. That community is no longer useful. They're no longer getting the information on. We're getting this, these token benefits if we do this, so we do this and we do this. So how we're different on that side of things is we have a full economy within the system and we're targeting the actual people that we want to go continue to use this game. So when we say, hey, we're getting 1 million fortnite users on um. They are literally the people that we want. Like we want those fortnite users. They're coming on, they have epic accounts, they already play fortnite and we're bringing them to show them this layer, this new game layer.

Joeri: 26:48

So I mentioned community, and another popular, I would say, term these days is AI. You can, you know, ai is everywhere. So then I'm also thinking AI in gaming. Yeah, how do you see AI shaping the future of the Web3 gaming experiences?

Amos: 27:11

Yeah, man, ai is incredible and what people are doing in the gaming space with ai is so cool. I'm not sure if, uh, you've seen the uh pubg ai. It's essentially an ai in game that functions as a person and you give it voice command. It's essentially like it follows you around and or it's one of your players. So if I don't have friends to kind of get a duo partner, or I only have three people and I need four, you can sub in an ai, which is really really cool and it's balanced to the level of skill that you're at and you can give it commands, voice commands in game, and it will go do things for you. So if you're like, hey, I need this kind of ammo in pub g, can you, when you, when you see some, can you ping it for me and it'll start taking these commands, um, that your friends aren't going to take, they're not going to help you out with that maybe, if they're good, maybe they will, um, but yeah, that's, that's one piece.

Amos: 28:07

We've got other amazing pieces where, like, we're talking about NPCs that are fully AI-driven. So the depth in their characters and we've seen this a lot with these AI agents and stuff the depths in these NPC characters are going to be unbelievable. It's not just a basic you say this, they say this it has real depth in that character's life information. I'm sure you could probably and people have done this but you could sit with one of these ais and get to their life story and stuff, and the cool thing about that is the game developers will build that into the world and yeah, I think it's. I think it's really amazing what's going to, what is happening with ai and gaming and, oh man, there's so much more and I think we don't have time, but there is so much more I'd love to speak about yeah, I mean that case.

Joeri: 28:57

You will need to come back later time on the podcast because ai is so. It's so huge. You know I'm also an ai trainer for companies and more of the marketing side, but there are so many possibilities Also for this podcast. By the way, people that are following me know I'm using some AI to repurpose everything, even to edit the podcast afterwards. Now we mentioned community AI. Another subject is NFTs, because I mentioned it from in the beginning that it's something also I think you're passionate about. So what role do NFTs and digital ownership then play in the future of, let's say, esports? I will traditional gamers fully embrace, yeah, owning their in-game assets. Do you think it will happen?

Amos: 29:45

yeah, so, yeah, like it's a gamer dream. Whether the gamers know this or not, or understand that blockchain technology is for them. It's like all the people doing Web3, yes, there are people that want to make money in Web3 and that sort of thing but, like the actual gamers, they see this as like this is the ultimate gamer dream's. It's giving ownership back to the players. It's, it's it's I'm not sure if you've ever heard this term.

Amos: 30:17

It's term is called play for keeps, and what we, what we used to do when we were younger is we used to essentially like play marbles, or we would play tarzos or cards, whatever happened to be, and I'm five years old playing marbles and or bay blades or whatever happens to be, and you play and you play and you play.

Amos: 30:36

And then someone's like play for keeps, and play for keeps means that you spin your Beyblade or you shoot your marble and if you lose, you lose your marble, and that is something that's possible because you have ownership of those physical items, right? What's really really interesting? So, this is a common term in Australia and what's really interesting is you say this term to someone that's 18, they have no idea what you're talking about, and the reason they have no idea is because they have never had ownership of the items that they have in any of these games, which is crazy, like that's crazy. So they can't create these up the ante side games, side quests, side missions, because they don't actually have ownership of the things that they're buying in games. I think that's sad, but I also think this is how technology works we always start and we go off and then it always comes back. There is a problem, there is no ownership, and we're going to come back to it and it's going to be all through gaming.

Joeri: 31:34

Wow, we are nearing the end of the podcast episode. That's something I always like to ask, is Amos, at this moment, what are you now the most excited about Is it for Web3 Gaming, for your company of things that are going to happen this year?

Amos: 31:54

Yeah, man, I am most excited about this product launch. I I keep like we've worked on this so hard and it's and I'm so excited for to see how it lands, really to see how it lands in the community, what it has. I feel like it has an amazing combination of novels which people love in the crypto space. It's new, it's exciting. It hasn't been done before. I'm excited to have users on it and see what they're thinking about it. I'm excited to change it. But, yeah, I like to give you an idea.

Amos: 32:26

I I saw the promo video for it yesterday and I walked away. I just finished up work and I was walking across the road to my home and like I just had adrenaline shooting through my whole body and I was just like, oh my god, like this is so exciting and it's just this sort of roller coaster of up and downs and you have that sort of excitement we're far out, this is going so well. And then, on the other end of that, it's like I'm in tech, so I'm like making sure that everything is running everything smooth and this is going to launch really well. And then something comes up on the tech side and I'm like, oh no, like I gotta fix this. So, man, I'm just absolutely enjoying the ride and I'm so excited for his launch on the 25th of February.

Joeri: 33:12

Oh, that is so cool. You kept the best for the end of the episode, amos. So, yeah, amazing. I also love your energy and the way you know the positivity and the way how you see things different. You know that's how you have been able to build such interesting projects. If my listeners they want to know more about your launch and everything that you are doing Amos, where would you like me to send them?

Amos: 33:36

yeah, you can send them to xpgg. Super, super simple. You can find our twitter at it's at perry on dow. So we are a dow as well. So you can find our twitter at perry on dow. And, yeah, check us out cool.

Joeri: 33:54

As my listeners know, there are always show notes. Your links will be in there. There will be a blog article about the podcast. If you have any additional information, amos because you know the time was short you would like me to include in the podcast show notes, let me know, then my listeners can go there and find this extra information. Well, it was really a pleasure talking to you. The time went so fast. Thank you so much, amos thank you, Joeri.

Amos: 34:20

Have a have a great night and, yeah, hopefully we speak again sometime yeah, I'm looking forward to that.

Joeri: 34:26

Meet you in real life, guys. For Amos a day is just starting. It was such a pleasure to have him on the show. So if you like this episode and if you are a gamer or a game up to the gaming, or you know people around you that might be interested in this episode, be sure to share the episode with them. If you are not yet following the show, this is a really good, really good moment now to hit the subscribe button. If you haven't given me a review yet, if you give me these five stars, this would help me even reach a bigger audience and, of course, I would like to see you back next time. Take care, thanks, juergen.