For four days, from March 20-23, 2023, thousands of the world's leaders, investors, brands, enthusiasts, and experts gather for the Outer Edge LA 2023 event. It featured a series of talks about the world of Web3 and the NFT community. Present at the event are our hosts, who relive the recent event with us in this special episode. They deliver different interviews from guests helping to build the next revolution in gaming. Tune in to hear from the geniuses behind Zed Run, Brawler Bearz, Life Beyond, and Decentral Games and Win-Win. Don’t miss out on learning about blockchain games, MMO in Web3, digital horse racing, the leading metaverse DAO, and using NFT to create win-win situations for charities, users, and the community.
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Listen to the podcast here
Web3 Gaming From Outer Edge LA 2023 | Featuring; Zed Run, Brawler Bearz, Life Beyond, Decentral Games & Win-Win
Web3 explorers, stay tuned for a conversation from this past Outer Edge LA event, which went from March 20th to 23rd of 2023 in downtown Los Angeles, featuring a series of talks from our special Web3 focus stage. This episode will feature four different interviews with guests helping build the next revolution in gaming. Keep reading and enjoy. Finally, watch more videos from 2023’s Outer Edge LA event by visiting Watch.OuterEdge.live. Sign up for free access to everything you may have missed with your email. See you over there and enjoy the show.
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We have another amazing guest. Do you want to go ahead and introduce yourself to the audience?
My name's Carlo Garcia. I'm the CMO for Brawler Bearz, and we are a blockchain game.
A blockchain game, what does that mean? Everybody has different explanations of what blockchain games are.
We are basically a passive strategy game. We use a lot of WoW and RuneScape card play dynamics and character evolution, but it's all about decentralizing gaming assets. You have ownership over your playable character that you can evolve through training and things like that. You also have all the in-game earned items that you get like weapons, armor, and things like that. It's all powered by dynamic NFTs. They are all equipped on chain.
Explain that. Dynamic NFTs are a newer concept, so a lot of people wouldn't understand what that means. Can you explain this dynamic concept?
You have your base traits and rarities, but through the gameplay, through questing or battles, you are able to earn items that are armor, weapons, base traits, and things like that you can dynamically change the look and stats of your bear over time. It's constantly evolving. It gives people customization over their NFT, whether they are using it for a PFP or for gameplay. If you got a trait that you don't like, you can change it. It's about giving ownership over what your NFT looks like.
Customization seems to be the name of the game now. Are you guys going to add bulls at some point just so the market knows? For now, it's bears, and then they evolve. They grow horns and that's how we know we are in a bull run.
We could do an item trait for bullhorns.
How many assets are floating around right now in your ecosystem?
We have got the base bears. There are about 4,169. We are going to be bumping that up to about 5,000 soon. There are 180 base traits and then 140 new equipable item traits that have been added in, but we are going to constantly evolve as we grow and build.
There’s a lot of room for customization there. How do you see your universe expanding?
We have delivered everything that we wanted to deliver for chapter one. Chapter two, it's all about expanding the gameplay and doing PVE, which is Player Versus Environment, because now it's PVP battles, so battling with one another, and then doing tournaments where people go all out with all their bears.
Tournaments in the play-to-earn environment are about to be insane. I have been having so much fun looking at trading card games and RPGs. Everything has this competitive layer to it that we are starting to tap into and say, “How do we structure the reward system in a way that makes competitive gaming more accessible to people at large?” Are there big gaming guilds and things like that you are excited about?
We haven't tapped into any of those yet. They are absolutely there. Here is one of the things because we are in the passive strategy stage now. As soon as we start incorporating some more of those card play dynamics into the PVE, then we can start approaching some guilds.
You are doing the foundational layer. You got the mortar and pestle out. You are like, “We are going to grind this out and make sure it's nice and polished,” and then you are going to take it to the mainstream.
We have twenty smart contracts that we have built in-house to power the ecosystem.
That's a lot of work too. It takes a lot of time. When we talk about something like moving from Web3 into a Web2 audience, do you have a different approach to get those people onboarded into these types of gaming experiences?
We are going to have to remove all blockchain talk in terminology and make it as easy to onboard people into it. One of the biggest things that we will start seeing is AAA companies like Sony and things like that where the consoles are going to bring the adoption to us.
I think they are coming. We have seen a lot of tinkering behind the scenes with those big companies, and they are going to be slow. They are behemoths.
Sony had a patent that went out about earning NFTs, but also taking them across console. That's going to probably going to be the next big thing.
Soon those avatars on your PlayStation and Xbox are going to have way more meaning than just, “That's how I can tell it's mine versus my dad's.” I wonder if they are going to have to put locks on there so your friends don't come and grind out on your play to earn game or take your stuff.
Take it and transfer it to their wallet. That awesome avatar that you got with all those rare skin traits and everything like that, you are going to lose it, but no.
I love gaming. Gaming is here to stay. We have a little bit of a long road ahead, but it's made tremendous strides. Thank you for pushing the envelope forward. Also, thank you for joining me.
I appreciate it.
Absolute pleasure.
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Welcome to another session of Web3 focus. I have Benjamin with me. How are you doing, Benjamin?
Doing great. Thank you.
How are you?
I'm good. Tired, but I'm good.
Let's focus on you. What are you doing? What are you focusing on Web3?
I'm the Cofounder of a game development company. Owe have over 100 people across three studios in Europe. We are also acquired by a big group in the NFT space called Animoca Brands. We are a subsidiary of Animoca Brands. We are developing this very ambitious MMORPG on the blockchain called Life Beyond.
Tell me more about Life Beyond, please.
Life Beyond is this take on the MMO genre in the Web3 space. It starts like an MMORPG, but it's expanding into a metaverse. The very short pitch is that you are participating in this endeavor to build a new society on a planet called Dolos. It’s a very enigmatic planet taking in a future full of opportunities but also full of danger. As a member of this project, you are assuming a profession that you pick. You can be an engineer, soldier, architect, farmer, or politician. By doing so, you are playing the game but you are also earning ERC-20 tokens, NFTs. It's basically a fiction, but you can truly have opportunities that are very tangible.
Life Beyond is this take on the MMO genre in the Web3 space. Click To Tweet
Let's say that I want to play the game, how do I get started?
Now, the game is in development, but we are starting to release some modules from the game. We started with the hub, which is a spaceship that is now orbiting over the planet. You go to PlayLifeBeyond.com to where you can sign in. You can download the client. We have a very active Discord server with a lot of people. We have over 50,000 people between Discord and Twitter.
You can buy some of the NFTs on the secondary market. We are not selling any right now, but these NFTs give you additional privileges. Some of the experiences are gated for our founders, the ones holding the founder key. You have many opportunities to engage, but in any case, there's no gateway. You can come to Discord, hang out with us, and eventually jump into the game.
You mentioned that you were acquired by Animoca Brands. How did that happen?
As we were raising our Series A at the end of 2021, we got into this conversation with them and we had a great culture fit and great momentum. Rather than raising our Series A, we joined the mothership.
You say that people can come and hang out with you on Discord. Where can I find those links specifically?
It is PlayLifeBeyond.com. You can find us on social media. Twitter, @LifeBeyond. You can follow us there. There's a lot of stuff happening and the Discord community is fantastic.
It should be. I want to take this as an opportunity for you to send a message to those out there who want to know what's up or want to join the Web3 community in general. What would you say to them?
What's fantastic is that when you are part of a Web3 community, you can interact and hang out. Everybody is very much focused on building. There are interesting incentives for this on top of that because you are holding assets whose value can appreciate over time. You have the right level of incentive. Regardless of the assets, regardless of all this, there is a core culture, which is about building. I myself hang out on Discord every day. I spend a lot of time communicating with our communities. Just come. You will get a sense of what I'm talking about.
Last question before I let you go, what's missing from the Web3 space to become mainstream?
A couple of things. The first thing is we need to stop talking about Web3. It has to be about the products and services that we can bring. Now, it's too much still focused on having a crypto wallet and NFTs, but what matters is more the ethos that is behind it. The ethos is that whatever experience you are participating in, you are a collaborator, partner, and stakeholder.
When we stop caring so much about the technology part that we care about the ideology of it, this will have a massive impact because everybody will start to understand the benefit of this mindset shift that is happening now. The second thing is that we need better experiences. We need better UX, but we will also need games, and that is what is coming now, that are built by experienced developers and people who have been building games for many years because it's a very difficult thing. Building a game is very complicated, and Web3 makes it even more difficult. We need to have more experiences and higher quality and then people will start coming not because it's a Web3 thing, but because they will come because of the game and they want to have fun and that these games are fun.
The terminology needs to change. I do agree with you and I appreciate you saying that. Thank you so much for coming.
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
It's all good, Benjamin. Thank you.
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I'm here with Chris. Can you introduce yourself a little bit about your project and tell us what you are interested in?
Chris Ebeling, I'm one of the Cofounders of Zed Run. Zed Run is a digital horse racing ecosystem built on Polygon where you buy, breed, and race digital race horses. It is NFTs with utility. We'd like to call them living and breathing NFTs as well. They got digital DNA, which you can breed the ride horse championship stable. You can make something out of it.
You have done something interesting with the names of the breeds of your horses as well. Can you explain that? What differentiates the different types of horses and what's that power scale you gave them? It was like Vitalic.
We have got Buterins, Nakamotos, Szabos, and Finneys. We got four bloodlines and the Nakamoto was the strongest. We are throwing Easter egg tributes to their original blockchain founders and leaders out there. The Nakamoto are the Z1s. They are the strongest, Z1s and Z2s. You want to try to get yourself a Nakamoto and that bloodline is the strongest.
What are those going for now? Those are highly sought-after horses.
It goes differently. It depends if it's been raced or unraced or not. If it's been on the tracks and it's got some good stats behind it, that brings up the value. If it's unraced then it's for you to discover then it's all speculation.
This is confusing for a lot of people who don't understand the complicated nature of racing something that is simulated versus racing real-life horses. How do you explain this component of it's horse racing but it's very legit like its own sport?
It's provably fair on the blockchain and it's a game of skill. The way the game works is you get a horse and you have a race. You have to discover where it's good. It's like a black box that you have to then put into races. It has different lengths. We can race 1V1 now. You can race 1V6. You can race up to twelve horses and you need to figure out where your horse races best and at what's length. Once you do that, you can skillfully now decide who you want to race against and what track lengths. We have got data to show that if you are doing the research and putting the time in to understand and see what your horse is about, you can make a better chance of winning. It is a game of skill.
You have had this project live for a while now. How many users do you have? You have quite a few.
We have got over 50,000 stable owners now. That’s what's interesting and that's without even doing proper marketing. We are starting a proper marketing push.
That was all in the underground. That was in the early stages.
We rode that early wave of NBA Top Shot, and we were lucky to position ourselves and launch at the same time.
Tyson got involved in your project.
Mike Tyson was at the party. We have Zab Judah join us, Brooklyn's finest six-time champion boxer. He plays as well. We saw Henry Cejudo who's a UFC fighter. He's got horses too.
It's all the Vegas guys. There's an interesting parallel. You are naming boxers and UFC fighters.
We mostly got NBA players playing. We had Wilson Chandler. I know Damon Stoudamire who's a coach now. He's got horses. The crossover there is what it is. It's sports and competitive. Zed gives you that competitive nature when you are not on the court or in the ring and connecting with your fans. That's what's beautiful.
We are Web3 in focus. What are you focused on for the coming future?
We are focused on improving the gaming platform and the gaming loop. We are looking at onboarding the masses like everybody else in the space. We have got 50,000 users, which is great, but we want 500,000 or 1 million. To do that, we have to reach the masses who are outside of these walls, the people who aren't as crypto-savvy. To reach them, we got to think about the UX design. How can we make this game accessible fast as well? We have a metric. One way of doing that is this free-to-play and earn model which we are experimenting with which is launching soon.
Thank you so much for coming on and explaining that. We are grateful to have you and, hopefully, we will be back.
Grateful to be here. Cheers.
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Michael, welcome. Thank you for being a part of the show. How's the conference been going for you?
The conference has been great. I was here in 2022. We were a sponsor at least for Decentral Games and I'm happy to be here again. I live right down in San Diego so it's a pretty easy drive up.
I'm LA based so we are part of the SoCal family. Why are you here? What are you representing at this particular conference?
I'm here representing two organizations. One of them is Decentral Games right here. We are the leading metaverse DAO and Web3 game development company. At any given time, we are responsible for 60% of all the traffic that goes into Decentraland. People are piling in there to play our flags or product which is called Ice Poker. It's essentially Texas Hold’em Poker in the metaverse. We now have that available on a mobile platform as well as browser.
You said two, so that's exciting number one. What's number two?
My company is Neo Optimum. We consider ourselves the bridge from Web2 to Web3 in the most complete service offering possible. We will work with the company that is interested in going over to the Web3 space and work with their creative team to come up with the project or product ideation, move on to marketing, and move on all the complete dev work associated with Web3 all the way to execution. From start to finish, it's a turnkey service. We have been very blessed to be able to take on some fantastic clients over 2022.
Any particular client or story you'd like to share with us?
One of the clients we are sponsoring some of the events here is called Kimo Sabe Mezcal. It's a liquor brand. When I met the CEO, he had a wonderful and beautiful story about this shamanistic tribe that’s from the Zacatecas region of Mexico that he’s been working with for many years. They are a tribe of healers.
He showed me some of their art and he was very curious about this space. I told him about my company. We connected all the dots and we were able to create this very unique product offering where we created 1,888 of these, 1 of 1 individually hand-beaded bottles that are blessed by the shamans down there. They come in this amazing product offering. We are here talking about that a little bit. I have one of them with me at some point, and I will show you.
No, I'm looking forward to it, but let's save the sizzle for the end. In your experience working on these different projects, especially talking to Web2 brands, what have you noticed in 2022 in the change in the conversation, if any?
They are more curious. I feel like there's still a lot of speculation and people are still uneasy about certain aspects of the industry and rightfully so. I understand that, especially with the economic conditions and climate, but people are curious. Those that are tech savvy that are already in Web2 have an understanding that the technology, the foundation of what's going on in our industry here in Web3, is only going to be here to stay and continue to evolve. It's going to be eventually integrated into every step of the way of our life as we know it.
It makes a lot of sense. You are offering this turnkey solution then because it provides opportunities for brands to not have to do all the minutia and build their own teams, but maybe work in collaboration with yours.
Exactly. You have it spot on. We are talking with some big brands now. I signed some NDAs. I can't talk, but some pretty large luxury brands are very interested in moving forward in this space and they see all of the possibilities that can come with using this technology that we have.
I heard there are some real-life events that you were alluding to. Is that the black suitcase that I see?
It is. I will grab it. It is quite beautiful. The 1,888 bottles that we created for this line, you purchase via NFT. It's an 1155 contract. If you choose to claim your bottle, you will burn the NFT, and then we have a gas list mint where you will get a new NFT that still represents the collection to have the digital piece there. If you choose to sell that NFT to someone else, they have the right to claim the bottle. These bottles once again are all hand beaded one of ones. This is what they look like here. Feel free to pick.
This is a beautiful bottle. As someone that's Mezcal fan, I can take this home. First, I have to get the NFT.
One other thing to note is all of us are big fans of technology here across the board. We partnered with another company called Verify, and I'm sure you have maybe heard of that. They do NFC technology. We put a sticker on the bottom of each one of these bottles and it will authenticate that it's part of this actual collection. Furthermore, you can upload any type of media that you want to showcase to your friends or anything like that. You tap your phone on the bottom of the bottle. You don't need an app and you have all of this accessible media. It's another Web3 company supporting another Web3 company, and it's a beautiful thing.
It sounds like there are a lot of different places for people to go. If I'm a Web2 brand, let's start there and I'm interested in working with you. Where do I go? What do I do?
Our website is under maintenance mode, but we will be up. That would be NeoOptimum.com. If you want to tap in with me directly, all my socials are @MGuyTheMan. That's on Twitter and Instagram. It's on everything else. I got responsive to DMs.
If I wanted to know more about your metaverse gaming, where do I go and what do I do?
You could check us out on Twitter @DecentralGames. We have a pretty robust following. We have been big players in the space for a long time. If you want to dive into the game itself, you can go onto App.Decentral.Games. Take a look at what we have going on there. Anyone that's reading this, if you guys at all want a little free trial, ping me directly. I will send you a wearable on the house. They will give you three free sit-and-go tournament entries. I'm happy to do so for everybody reading.
I know what I'm doing right after this. Thank you so much for your time. Enjoy the rest of the conference.
I appreciate you. Thank you.
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Mike, it’s a pleasure to have you here. How's your conference been going so far?
It's been going great. Even though it's a little smaller than 2022, it's been impactful. I am meeting a lot of great people and having some real conversations. A lot of people are here this 2023, the folks that understand the power of the technology and not the hype and all of that. It's been great. I had a great panel. I had the honor to join Metta World Peace with Jennifer Prince Head of Commercial Partnerships for the LA Rams, the Head of Biz Dev for Dapper Labs. It was a great conversation around athletes, brands, and Web3 and the impact that we can have. It's been great.
Let's say I have no idea what Win-Win is. Give me the download. What's it all about?
We are building a compete-to-earn gaming portal where we work with a bunch of celebrities or what I now call entities of influence that celebrities, artists, brands, universities, anybody with an audience, they come, they bring them to our platform to where they are gaming. They are competing in casual mobile games.
Think like Tetris and Candy Crush types of games. What they are doing by playing is they are earning. They are competing to earn NFTs based on where they are on the leaderboard. Those NFTs unlock real-world experiences like having dinner with the player after the game or courtside seats, autograph jerseys, and all types of things.
The unique sauce that we have is what we call the collection mechanic, where you are not only earning the NFTs but you are collecting them in a way that creates a winning combination. Think about it like the McDonald's Monopoly game where you buy the burger, the fries, and the drink. You peel off the game pieces, and once you have the right combination, you can turn it in and get the Dodge Viper or $1 million.
We are taking the page out of that playbook to where people are competing to earn the NFTs as opposed to being in Discord and having to be there on the drop and OpenSea and things like that. They are competing to earn. The monetization piece comes by way of their entry fee into the tournament. What happens is the unique thing and what makes it a real win-win is the majority of their entry fee will go to a philanthropic cause that the host cares about.
Those are the player's charity, the university's endowment fund, and things like that. They are making money for something that they care about. We make money in the process. The fans are earning and collecting these new assets that they now own and can turn in for prizes and/or sell to other users who may need that winning piece for their combination. That's what we are doing now at Win-Win. We are excited about going into the Web3 space.
That's an innovative model where everyone wins something and it doesn't seem like they are losers in any of the situations. How did you come up with that idea?
The origin store of Win-Win goes back to when I started the company in 2016 out in Silicon Valley. My initial premise was looking at things like Fantasy Football. The fact that those companies are making billions of dollars, but the athletes weren't making anything in that whole situation. Given that I'm a former NFL player, I have access and understanding.
I was able to align the incentives around how I can get the players activated. I know what we care about outside of money and contracts. If I can help them raise money for what they care about and make them look good in the process, they will offer tickets and things like that. That was where the original model was where the players would host their own fantasy sports tournament promoted directly to their fans. They already have an engaged audience that will come and do whatever they are talking about, especially when it can result in riding on a private jet with the player or court-size seats, which we have done.
That was the original model where the charity can win, the fan can win, and the player themselves win as well in terms of the awareness and the brand positivity that they are able to garner. We then win because we are making money in the process to power the whole thing. With Web3 and leveraging smart contracts and NFTs, now that value becomes much stronger.
Every time one of those NFTs changes hands, the royalties will go to the charity, to us, and even to the initial earner of the NFT itself. I'm excited about what the technology itself enables us to do. Can we talk about mass consumer adoption? Our goal is that the users or the fans are coming in because Steph Curry said so.
They come and they are playing the game, not joining a raffle or auction. They are earning these assets. We call them NFTs or Golden Tickets. It's the thing that gets you to the Chocolate Factory. A new user who isn't in Web3 will look up after a month and say, “I got 30 NFTs that I have earned, and it's still valuable because I can unlock combinations or I can sell them to other users.” That's how we evolved from FanDuel for good to now our Win-Win 3.0 model as I call it.
When you are working with these athletes, what's been the reaction of their community and the athletes themselves? What's the feedback you have gotten from?
It is to the point where we start talking about partnership and they want to come in and be an investor in the company because they love that. They are giving their audience something of value. It is something where they feel truly a part of the impact. They are able to donate to the cause in a more fun and engaging way.
One thing that from a data standpoint that we are proud of is we are converting organic social media traffic to nearly a 5% conversion rate from, “Click the link in the bio,” to a transaction. It's not targeted marketing or anything. It's like, “Click the link in my bio.” Five percent of those people go in and create a Win-Win account, join the tournament, and then make a donation of around $30 to $40 on average, and they are winning some pretty cool things. It is the ability to be a part of the story of the player and then be able to see the impact. We story tell around here's what your money and your donations enabled these kids to get XYZ experience, a community cleaner, or whatever the philanthropic cause is.
It sounds like you have built a viable business model that is win-win and could keep going on. What's the next step? It seems like you have reached a place that so many Web3 projects want to be.
For us, it's about now scale. We have been quietly testing and iterating. We are going into this Web3 space because the Web3 part, that's what we are getting ready to launch. We are going to have a lot of noise. You guys are first to hear it in terms of what we are going to market with. The great thing is that we have been around. We venture back.
We already have 200-plus celebrities, athletes, and artists. Now we are expanding into anybody because we went away from fantasy sports, football, and basketball to now casual mobile games. We can work with Steph Curry and Taylor Swift because the games could be a casual basketball game or a puzzle game, a Tetris game, or something that anybody from 16 to 61 can figure out very quickly. For us, it's about raising awareness and we are going to have some pretty cool campaigns coming up by the end of 2023. We are excited. We have been quietly building under the hood. Now it's about scale and building a community around folks that love the Win-Win model.
It's been quiet. Now the cat is out of the bag. I'm listening. I want to be a part of the games or I want to find out more. Where do I go and what do I do?
Now they can go to TryWinWin.com. We are going to be making some big announcements coming up soon, but that's our homepage. We will have more opportunities for folks to join early beta testing and different things like that. That's what's coming up here.
I can't wait to do it. If I can get something that is courtsy with the Clippers, I'm all about it. A pleasure to meet you and make sure to go check out that information.
The pleasure is all mine.
Thanks, Mike.
I appreciate it.
Important Links
- Watch.OuterEdge.live
- Brawler Bearz
- Life Beyond
- Discord - Life Beyond
- @LifeBeyond - Twitter
- Zed Run
- Neo Optimum
- @MGuyTheMan - Twitter
- Instagram - Michael Guy
- @DecentralGames - Twitter
- App.Decentral.Games
- Win-Win
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