The gaming industry is perhaps one of the most prolific industries today. With the significant advances and developments in the blockchain and NFT space, integration of the two is inevitable. Today’s guest is a games industry veteran of 20 years making all the right moves to do just that. Jamie Jackson is the Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer of Mythical Games, the next-gen game technology studio creating universal economies driven by player ownership of NFTs. He joins Jeff Kelley, Eathan Janney, and Josh Kriger to discuss the exciting innovations they’re working on to bring blockchain tech and player ownership into the classic gaming world. They’re all about having that “game first” mentality to bring the best experiences to gamers everywhere. Plus, join our chat with our special Hot Topics guest Jasper Donat, CEO of Branded, as he shares the latest news about his company and the upcoming All That Matters event in Singapore later this month. Stay tuned!
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Listen to the podcast here
Jamie Jackson Of Mythical Games – Venture-Backed Next-Gen Game Technology, Plus: Jasper Donat Of Branded, And More…
NFT curious readers, stay tuned for this episode and find out how Mythical Games is at the tip of the spear in blockchain gaming, why ninjas and shells hold a special place in our guest’s heart, and how All That Matters and Web3 Matters are pushing the envelope of IRL events and bridging Web2 to Web3. All this and more on this episode.
Don’t forget that we put a little gathering together called NFTLA that brought out thousands of the world’s most innovative doers in the NFT space. Head to NFTLA.live to get tickets to our bigger, bolder, and better but just as intimate and impactful event happening in Los Angeles from March 20th to 23rd, 2023. See you there.
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This sponsored spotlight episode features Jamie Jackson, Cofounder and Chief Creative Officer of Mythical Games, the next-generation game technology studio creating universal economies driven by player ownership of NFTs. A games industry veteran of over twenty years, Jamie has an array of experience, including developing titles on every platform from PlayStation to PC, directing movies and game trailers, and so much more. Prior to Mythical, Jamie founded Slingshot Cartel and FreeStyleGames, later acquired by Activision Blizzard.
As Studio Head at Activision Blizzard, he was the creative responsible for games such as DJ Hero, Guitar Hero Live, Sing Party, and Call of Duty Online. Jamie also won and has received several nominations for multiple awards across industries, including four BAFTA awards. Mythical Games is a next-gen game tech studio at the intersection of blockchain and games. The studio’s first game is Blankos Block Party, a multiplayer game styled like a giant block party for collectible digital vinyl toys. Jamie, welcome to the show.
That was the best intro I’ve ever had. Thank you.
You deserve it. You’ve been crushing it for a long time. It’s always great to talk to someone deep in an industry, which we will call Web2, that has transitioned to Web3 and is also a pioneer in that side of the house. Certainly, you qualify in that regard. Mythical has been crushing it. It was great to have you at NFTLA in March 2022. Much has happened since then even in your world. We would love to start learning more about the origin story of how Mythical Games came to be, how it has grown since its conception, and how you got it all started with your partner.
When I was in Slingshot, it was my wife’s fault a little bit. My wife also works in the industry. She’s at Nintendo. She’s a super big deal and way cooler than me and does cool stuff for me. She was living in Europe. She came to move to Europe to live with me. She transferred over to Nintendo Europe. The deal we made with each other was that I finish Guitar Hero Live because I was thinking about not finishing it. She was like, “You will be an insufferable asshole if you don’t finish that project.”
She moved to England. The deal was whenever it was ready for her to have a career move, I would move. That’s what brought us to America. I’ve been in Seattle for years. I was done with video games. I was burnt out a little bit. I felt like we kept making the same game over and over again. Through Slingshot is where blockchain as a concept and technology landed on my radar. We were looking at it from a point of view of building funding models around games.
I was working with one of my investors on that project around 2015 or 2016. Everyone had all this crypto and knew where to spend it. People wanted to invest and grow. We started to work on this concept, “Let’s put a game on a chain but people could fund it, sell it, or diversify their funding. It would all pay out.” That was the high-level way we were looking at it. I spoke to my lawyers in England. They were like, “You’re going to go to jail. Don’t do it.” I was like, “That’s depressing,” but that’s where it started to bubble up for me.
Mythical Games: Let’s put a game on a chain, but people could fund it and then they could sell it, they could divest their funding and it would all pay out.
When I moved to America in Seattle, I was going to be a kept man, take it easy, and kick back. John, who I’ve known for years, worked together at Activision. That’s how we met each other. We both ran different studios. He called me up and was like, “I’m going to start a new studio. Have you heard of blockchain?” I was like, “Funny enough, I have.” At the time if you paid attention, CryptoKitties was a thing.
He’s like, “There’s this thing. This would be cool.” He threw this whole concept at me of using it for player ownership. We hadn’t drilled into that before. I was like, “It’s interesting.” We were noodling around on it. The idea of player ownership and using that technology to give you this digital history sparked an interest in me again. It was something I thought was cool. My retirement lasted about 6 or 7 weeks.
Let’s face it. Twizzlers, Cherry Coke, and even Diet Cherry Coke get old eventually.
We don’t have kids. I was also like, “I’m going to be a stay-at-home dad.” That would have been the hardest job on the entire planet. That’s how it all began. John, I, and Rudy started to needle around with those concepts of how these things change players’ own assets that they’re either grinding out or paying for. That’s what became interesting. That was the spark that birthed Mythical.
It’s such a cool story. Talk about applicable experience. You’re the ideal person to co-found a gaming company with. For the people that aren’t as familiar as we are with Mythical, give them the background. Give us an understanding of what the platform is and what you view as its place in gaming.
Mythical started with John, me, and Rudy, and then we grew quite well so quickly. We brought another team in with Chris, Cam Thacker, and stuff. We were a very small team. We were trying to move quickly and using a little bit of the concept of how we build games a little bit different but we also believe in the need for this as a tech. It’s interesting tech. It changes the way you think about games. No one in video games realizes they don’t own anything that they have spent the money on or grinded their time through. It’s complicated.
When I got into video games, you made your engine. That’s insane. No one would do that. Everything we use is a tool, which makes a ton of sense. Our idea was, “Let’s build a product.” That’s where Blankos started but that’s also turning everything we’re doing into a tool so developers can plug it into whatever they’re using, whether it’s Unity, Unreal, or even if they are using their engine. Plug it in and build these economies. Everything can come off the back of it.
Your marketplace can be attached to it. It’s taking away all of that hard grind but we spent a lot of time with patents and looking at the legality of things with taxation. We have done a lot of work across the board. That was our thesis, “Let’s build a tool that makes something that appears quite complicated and make it easy for developers to ingest into their product and demystify it a little bit for them.” At the same, time we want to build products. John, I, Rudy, all of us, and all the people we have added to the team since came from games.
We all come from big products like Zynga, EA, and all that stuff. Everyone has got their hands dirty and has been a developer in some way, shape, or form. We wanted to build games and prove the theories that we believed in, which was to still build great games. You have to have a cool game. John was saying all that, “Putting blockchain in your games isn’t going to make your game good. You’ve still got to have a good game at the beginning.” We’re coming at it from trying to make great games but leaning into the idea of collection and ownership.
I don’t want to guess how old you are but when I started getting games, it was not like you had multiple skins for things. It’s not like we could all turn up in different ways. Online didn’t even exist when I first started playing games but now, it’s different. We all have different personas. We all show up to play multiplayer games in different ways. We all like to show off what we have done. We all want to look different as we do in real life. That was where Blankos came from. It was showing people what ownership could mean.
The other thing we wanted to do as well was bring creators in. We felt that blockchain allowed creators to come into the game world. How do you change the way games are made by allowing all of these creators in? Blankos was inspired by vinyl toys. The way we build it was so those creators and artists could come in and paint a Blanko in a different way. If you follow Blankos, you will see how diverse and different everything looks given it’s the same base model. We wanted to show how that could work as well and also show how brands could start to participate in games in an interesting way.
I have to point out also that in blockchain gaming, there isn’t a rich history of gaming experts that populate the space by and large. There are a handful of companies that are doing it. The difference is stark between folks that have spent that time in gaming and understand the ins and outs and the limitations of gaming in the traditional sense versus on the blockchain. The opportunities for ownership are not. If you dig a little deeper in the space for anyone reading, go on YouTube, watch demos, and understand what’s out there. You will see the difference. It’s evident. We appreciate those insights from someone with such a rich experience in gaming and the whole team. It’s an amazing team that you put together.
It’s a killer team. It’s a good pedigree from the top down all the way through. People care about games. That has been one of our mantras, “Games first.” We’ve got to put a game out that’s fun to play.
Let’s talk about that a little bit because you’ve amassed more than a million users in a relatively short amount of time. Certainly, in the blockchain space from tracking dApp reports on activity, that’s extremely significant even relative to some of the commonly talked about games in the space and some of the early pioneers. First, how did you do that? What’s the secret sauce? Personally, I wouldn’t mind a million readers for the show either but beyond that, talk to us more about the game, the mechanics, and how it came to be.
I’m going to probably sound like a broken record but, “Games first,” was always our thing. There are two billion-plus gamers in the world. There are probably less than a million blockchain gamers in the world or people that very much come from the tech. Our goal was always like, “Let’s bring this tech into the gaming world rather than try and force gamers into the blockchain NFT world.”
I’ve spent all my career with those gamers. You know how hard it is to move these people around. You know what makes them tick. That was always our thing, “We should come at it from games first.” We didn’t talk about blockchains to tech with Blankos at the beginning either because it can be intimidating. New technology scares people unless you’re intrinsically into it or you’re native of that technology. People freak out about it.
A good parallel is mobile gaming. Once the iPhone came out, mobile gaming took off in a development world. I was one of them. Someone was like, “There are free games.” I was like, “What are you on about? It’s hard enough to make a successful game anyway. You’re going to give them away for free.” People freaked out. Ten years later, you’re like, “Everything is free.” You’ve got to build your game and economy in a certain way that makes sense.
We started with Blankos. We wanted to build a game that looked and had a broad appeal visually. We wanted zero barriers to entry. That was the other thing. We didn’t want to have to push people down complex wallet setups and things like that. There’s a single account coming in through a Mythical account. The barrier to entry was pretty low. The cost of entry was super low as well.
We dropped some founders packs at the beginning but that was for the Web3 natives who cared about rarity, scarcity, and all that good stuff and got it. We wanted this to be a low-price point entry so you could play Blankos for free right from the beginning. That resonates with gamers. If you say it’s free-to-play, they get it. If you say blockchain, people are a bit like, “You’re killing polar bears.” I’m like, “No.” We thought about how do we talk to the audience at the beginning.
Mythical Games: We spoke to one audience who got it in one way. And then we spoke to that wider gaming audience in a different way.
We weren’t intended to double down on, “This is blockchain,” to the wider audience until the NFT explosion. All of a sudden, questions started to come up. It started to be a bit different. We weren’t trying to be nefarious around it. We spoke to one audience who got it in one way and then we spoke to that wider gaming audience in a different way. We talked about things like ownership. You own this. We were like, “We’ve got to educate two million people who don’t get what we’re trying to change.”
I’m curious. You seem to have a sixth sense for this stuff now. When you look at the demographics of the current audience, how does it compare to what you originally expected? Is it more a Web2, Web3, younger, or older?
It’s pretty broad from an age point of view. That speaks to the look and feel of Blankos. The vinyl toy collection appeals to most people. You could be our age or you could be 15, 16, or even younger. My kid loves all this stuff. Visually, it was brought up all. We still see that. The audience stuck with us. We brought some traditional gamers into this world. They have stuck with us from a community point of view. We’ve got the Web3 natives that have stuck with us as well. We’ve got a decent mix of people. It’s pretty broad. That speaks to the type of game it is.
We’re launching on Epic Games Store soon. It’s a big deal for us and for those of us in this space that care about this type of technology. My ideal world is we stopped saying blockchain gaming at some point. This is gaming. I don’t mean to devalue it. We don’t say 3D gaming anymore. I’m looking forward to getting to that place. That was how we talk about all of our games.
You are in a great position to help bridge that gap between traditional gaming and blockchain gaming and help make that merge happen or come to be. When you think of gaming in general as it relates to the adoption of blockchain, where do you view it? Is this the main driver in how you go about this? Are you thinking about driving mainstream adoption in your day-to-day or as part of your vision?
We think about the two billion gamers all the time. What matters to them? That’s not to say we ignore the Web3 crew because we don’t but we try to bring the tech to the gamers. The easy access point is number one. Gamers churn so quickly if you put too many barriers to get them into something. Making that simple at the moment is a big deal, which is why we have had fiat and crypto as payment methods from almost day one because we were like, “If we have only a crypto payment method, we limit our audience immediately.” We put that in from the beginning.
We’re allowing that stuff to happen and making it a low barrier to entry. We played with lots of different game types as well like the Blankos play-and-own method. If you look at our Party Pass, it’s a pretty traditional party pass-type approach. If you play any free-to-play game at Fortnite or anything else when you’ve got those different tracks, the paid track, and the unpaid track, we are using gaming terminology and gaming methods that most gamers know. It’s not intimidating. It’s familiar. That’s important.
With NFL Rivals even though we’ve got our Rarity League collection, which is the helmets, it sits in that Web3 world pretty firmly. The way that translates into Rivals the game or in a guild and being able to have other gamers and players come into your guild and then having that as a space, there will be traditional or regular guilds and rarity guilds. You can have access to different tournaments. You get access to the rewards. It all makes sense even to a gamer.
The cool thing about the Rarity League side is you’re getting access to early player drafts, which are NFTs that you can sell. If you know what that means, it’s super important to you but even if you don’t and you get into it, it’s all familiar. If you’re a player that’s into guild-type play, it’s familiar. It’s not scary. You get it. We think about that in a lot of the games. We’re bringing Nitro Nation World Tour. Nitro Nation had the original game. There are 75 million players.
We’re not changing that and shoehorning blockchain into the back of that game. We’re elevating the game with the team. We’re thinking about different stories, settings, creatives, and visuals but blockchain allows interesting ways to own cars and do cool things with those cars or whatever it might be. In each of the games we’re working on, we’re looking at different ways to bring in blockchain so it adds value rather than trying to shoehorn it in.
Bringing the masses in is a big part of it. You’re keeping it simple and easy. You are the easy button for mass adoption.
We hope so. I’m excited. I love all of our games. Getting Blankos out on Epic Games Stores is huge. We’re excited.
Let’s talk about another big partnership. You’ve got something going on with the NFL, Rarity League, which is exciting. Tell us a little bit more about that project and the drop. What’s it like to partner with the NFL? Not too many people can say they have done that.
It’s wild. We have had that relationship going on for a while now. Negotiating this and getting it to places took a hot minute. It’s core because the NFL has got an interesting look at technology with what they have done elsewhere. They’re a brand that is constantly evolving as well, which is super exciting because they’re trying to reach a new audience all the time, which is what we are trying to do with blockchain.
They’re innovative. Not every professional sports league is that innovative.
They’re top of the chain for North America in terms of how they try to think about reaching a new audience. It’s exciting. I fell in love with NFL and the Seahawks years ago. This season is going to suck. I’m not looking forward to this season but whatever. It has been cool. The way we have worked with them is this. We want to build a game that sits higher up the funnel than some other NFL products that appeal to that broader audience or that casual fan. It’s going to bring them in.
Rivals is our game. That’s the actual game. Rarity League is the collection. We dropped their champion teams, the Rams and the Bengals. Grab the helmets now. They’re going to have utilities in the game, which I talked about. You’re going to be able to get a guild. You can draft people into the guild. That guild is going to give you early access to player cards when we start dropping the player card packs and tournaments, and rewards for being a guild like a helmet depending on how you sit in leagues.
There’s cool stuff. Rivals is the game. That is mobile. There’s going to be team management. You rip packs and pull players. Each of these players is going to have different levels of a rarity so you can have common all the way through Mythical. They’re going to look different on the pitch. They’re going to do different things. It’s going to be cool. You can build all of that stuff out.
You can manage your team. You can skill and level those players up. You do it on the game as well. We’re building a more arcade experience. With the way you play, you control the court back and the place. You control whoever catches it or gets it. Think of it as much more arcade and casual bringing in that casual NFL fan as well as the casual gamer.
Mythical Games: Think of it much more arcade, much more casual, bringing in that kind of casual player, and casual NFL fan, as well as a casual gamer.
I can play as Tom Brady, my idol. That’s what you’re saying.
You can play as five variations of Brady depending on which pack you rip as well.
Can I bring him back to being a quarterback for the Patriots? I miss that time.
You can pick. When you go in, you pick your team, and then that’s your team. You can build whoever you want and bring them into your team. If he retires, you can keep playing him. He’s yours for as long as you want to keep him.
Jeff, we can, we can play Brady on the Bucs versus Brady on the Pats and see what’s up there.
We will see. That sounds cool though. I’m looking forward to messing around with it. There are lots of fun. When we look at the roadmap, I’m sure it’s pretty intensive. What’s next? What should we expect here in the coming months?
We hit on it. You’re going to see more Rarity League drops in the coming months. We’re doing all 32 teams, which we’re excited about. We can’t wait to share those stuff. In Nitro Nation, we’re going to start to talk a lot more about that. We will start to open the community. You start to see some of the trailers. We’re going to start to talk about some of the early drops for that, which we’re excited about. There’s some fun stuff happening there. That will transition to you at the end of 2022.
If you get a Rarity League helmet, you’re going to get into the beta access for the game. We’re doing a Rarity League-only beta access, not like a traditional beta. This is for people who’ve got that. It’s going to be cool. We’re going to work closely with the community to take feedback and play. You’re going to be able to play through the whole season. The game is pretty much functionally feature-complete at the moment. There’s traditional game stuff. We’re working through all the tweaks, gameplay visuals, and all that stuff. That’s what will come in later in 2022. There are lots to come. In 2023, we will start to get into the launch of all the products early on.
Are there any other partnerships or collaborations that you can share with us?
We have announced everything in NYC. You’ve got Epic coming as well. It’s going to be fun. For Blankos, we announced Atari. You’re going to see the Atari stuff coming into Blankos with the Epic drop. There is some good stuff.
You mentioned the videos. Are you producing the trailers for the games in-house?
We have been doing some in-house and some with partners. We’ve got a pretty kickass team across the board. If you were at the NFT.nyc event, the one we showed was for Nitro Nation. Mark Jones, who’s the creative lead on that project, pulled that out nowhere in about twelve days. I’ve got a good creative team in-house. We’re doing a lot of things in here but partnering with other teams as well. Here’s a shout-out to Cosmos who has been working with us on a lot of the NFL stuff.
You’re pretty heads down but when you look around you and see what’s going on in the Web3 space, we’re curious if there’s any inspiration that comes to mind in terms of other projects, collections, and what other folks are doing in the space that you draw inspiration from.
Something that I’m trying not to fall down the rabbit hole at the moment but I’m finding interesting is the whole AI-driven art that’s about to make its way or is in that Web3 space. It’s super disruptive. My background is I come from art. That’s how I came into this space. I’m interested in how that plays out and what people do with that from a collection point of view because that’s fast-forward into some interesting stuff. You don’t need to draw to be able to come up with some crazy stuff with that. That’s what my eyes are on at the moment when I’ve got two seconds.
There could be some art wall in one of your games where you can let your users mess around with some AI art. Why not?
Imagine how dangerous that would be.
We have had a few folks on the show. It’s amazing.
Have you heard of Fetch.ai, Jamie?
I haven’t.
I’m going to share some details with you. They were on the show. It was one of the early pioneers in that area. It’s an AI company that’s getting creative. They keep evolving what they’re doing in the space but they did do a cool AI art project.
The level of advancement is what gets me because you have these inputs and you think, “It’s going to look like whatever suggestions I gave it. It’s going to be obvious,” but it is not. It truly is intelligent. The outcomes are mind-blowing. It’s so cool to see how quickly that has advanced some of the products of these different tools out there.
I’m on the Fetch website. If someone checks now, they’re going to learn that even Fetch has evolved. You can use their tools to create your digital twin for you as an individual or your business and allow it to coordinate and improve the quality of your life. There’s something cool there.
There’s a whole thread around AI that we have to talk about but we will leave that for another convo. That’s segment one. We appreciate it. You are doing some amazing things at Mythical Games. We’re going to keep a close eye because that’s mind-blowing stuff.
Thank you.
Let’s shift gears a little bit though and get your personal perspective on some questions we like to call Edge Quick Hitters. These are ten set questions we ask every single guest of our show. It’s a fun and quick way to get to know you a little better. We’re looking for short, single-word, or few-word responses but we may dive a little deeper here or there. Jamie or Jdizzle, are you ready to dive in?
I’m ready. Let’s go.
Let’s do it. Question number one, what’s the first thing you remember ever purchasing in your life?
It was this shell necklace because I used to live by the beach. I bought my kid one in Hawaii. That was the first thing I remember.
Do you still have that floating around somewhere?
I don’t but as soon as I saw this thing on holiday, I was like, “I’m buying that for you because I remember buying that.” I lived in this middle-of-nowhere town in Wales.
Question number two, what’s the first thing you remember ever selling in your life?
Can I do a variation on that? I remember something I swapped. I’m a Warhammer 40,000 nerd. I paint the figures. At school, I painted up these Terminators and swapped them for an Atari Lynx with three games, Altered Beast, RoadBlasters, and stuff like that. I remember it was like, “I got the steal of the century.”
Question number three, what’s the most recent thing you purchased?
I bought a new shirt. I live in Seattle. I bought a new lumberjack shirt.
You’re officially in the tribe.
I am. I’m in PNW for life now.
You’re in the ’90s grunge era. It’s one of the two. Question number four, what is the most recent thing you sold?
I sold a Blanko. I’m a bit of a hoarder. Either I hoard stuff or give it away. I gave all my kids’ stuff away because that was cool.
Question number five, what’s your most prized possession?
It’s a 1967 Mustang with a 427 side oiler in it.
There was no hesitation on that. Is that with you out there in Seattle?
It’s in the UK. When I sold my first company, it was the thing I treated myself to. I shipped it back to the UK and I haven’t brought it back here. It’s in storage.
That’s a bummer though. You have to get it out there. Question number six, if you could buy anything in the world, digital, physical, service, or experience that’s currently for sale, what would it be? What do you have your eye on?
I would buy a cabin in the woods. I want to get out of here too. That would be the best.
Are you bringing the fam with you? Are you going to go solo?
Mid-century vibes would be great. Looking at the forest would be great. That would be cool.
I can appreciate that. For question number seven, we’re going to shift gears a little. If you could pass on one of your personality traits to the next generation, what would it be?
Don’t search for perfection, which took me a long time to learn because I didn’t use to subscribe. I was like, “Everything can be perfect.” It can’t. Don’t search for perfection. It’s a miserable journey. Allow yourself to find what’s right for you.
Those are words of wisdom for sure. On the flip side of that though, if you could eliminate one of your personality traits from the next generation, what would that be?
This is what I’m working on. Be a little notch calmer. Be a bit more Zen. Take it in before you react. That’s the one I’m trying to chew out as it is anyway.
You’re working on it. I get it. This is a little bit easier. Question number nine, what did you do before joining us on the show?
I was DJing. I ate a choco pie. I have a DJ setup over there. I play with it when I can.
It’s for an audience of one.
It’s right next to my desk. When I get out of it, I flip it on and play a few tracks. It’s a nice little reset. I was doing that.
You’re a true creator that is a creator by profession and does creator stuff to relax. I love it.
That’s it. If it wasn’t that it would have been paying a figure or something. I’m a little bit obsessive when it comes to that stuff.
It’s worth mentioning that Jeff’s younger boy is big into karaoke. He probably would love some of the games that you’ve created. One of his favorite possessions is this gold mic so he can karaoke. Maybe you can do some sets together.
I cannot sing. I’m terrible. I had to fly to America on my own once and sing for Reggie. Remember that Reggie used to be President. I had to sing Michael Bublé because I had to present. It was also how I met my wife but I took one for the team on that one.
It paid off for you. Here’s the last question for you. Question number ten, what are you going to do next after the show?
I’ve got another meeting, and then I might try and play golf.
That sounds like a nice afternoon. Let’s give a little bonus question. What do you say, Josh?
Let’s do it. I’m curious, Jdizzle. For those of you that don’t know, that’s his handle on Zoom. What is your favorite game of all time?
It’s Tenchu: Stealth Assassins on Sony PlayStation 2.
Why is that?
When I was growing up, I wanted to either be an architect or a ninja. I attribute that to watching legendary films like American Ninja 1 and 2 and anything ninja. I was like, “Ninja me.” My son is like that now, which is not a big surprise. When Tenchu came out, I was like, “I’m buying this game. It’s a ninja.” It was the first game for me that nailed stealth. I don’t know if any of you played it. It’s this great game. You play this ninja and go around. You have to do these missions.
There’s this cool storyline that runs through it. You were rewarded for not being seen. The mechanics were on point. You could throw breadcrumbs so the guard would go and eat them. You could jump down and slay that bro or throw poisoned rice. While they’re coughing, you could jump off the roof and then jump back up. They wouldn’t see you. It blew my mind. I felt like games were all about stabbing, shooting, running, and fighting. It was all about this. This one was like, “You need to not get seen.” I love that game so much. If they remastered it now, you wouldn’t see me for a month.
There’s something there. I have to check it out. You made me recall a childhood memory of throwing rice for my cousin’s wedding. They still give me shit because they found rice in their car years later. I threw so much rice that it landed in the window and destroyed their car forever.
You got a little carried away.
I got excited. I was six. It was my first wedding. I’m taking clumps of rice and throwing them around.
Thanks for sharing. That’s Edge Quick Hitters. We do appreciate it. We want to move over to segment number three, which is called Hot Topics. Our hot topic is special. It’s all about Branded, which is one of Asia’s leading producers of impactful events. We’re fortunate to have Branded’s Founder and CEO, Jasper Donat, here with us to share some of the latest news about his company and the upcoming All That Matters event in Singapore. Jasper, welcome to the show.
It’s great to hear that you’ve had two Brits on. That’s two fantastic accents to level everything out.
Indeed, sir. Thanks for joining so early as well. What is going on in your world? You’ve got some cool stuff coming up.
We’re going to be welcoming a couple of thousand people to Singapore. 2022 is our seventeenth year. There are a lot of other events going on but we’re the old boys. We bring Web2 and Web3 together. There’s nothing else like it. If you can imagine bringing the music industry together with the gaming industry together with the sports guys, the marketing guys, and the digital entertainment people, then all of a sudden, we’re layering in this wonderful thing called Web3 under the name of All That Matters.
Web3 Matters is our newest baby. We’re bringing Web2 to Web3. I keep calling it Web5. No one else finds that as funny as I do but we’re looking, we’re looking forward to it. We’ve got a lot of music playing as well. We’ve got about 30 bands coming. The whole week is being opened by the wonderful Yat Siu from Animoca Brands, which everyone knows. It’s going to be a lot of fun. Hopefully, we will be seeing our wonderful new friends from this show with us there.
We can’t wait. When you said, “Do you want to take a nineteen-hour direct flight to Singapore?” I was like, “Sign me up for that.”
The Singapore Grand Prix is at the end of that week. You don’t have to be a grease monkey to like the event. It’s a bucket list event. You’ve got the cars but you’ve also got the entertainment. They close down Singapore. It’s a night race. They have bands playing all over the place. It was once said that the artist lineup used to be Tugs for 45-year-old guys. I was a 45-year-old guy at the time but it’s fun. It’s a great and fun three-day event at the end of our week. We start the week, and then I get to relax and have fun on the weekend.
I’ll go.
I’ve got a space in my house for you. I’m going to change my name to Jdozzle, and then we go to the pub.
I’m in.
I’m moderating a panel on the main stage in the metaverse. Jamie, if you want to join me, let’s do it. Get over there.
I’ll let the family know later. We will see whether I get the no or yes.
Get a clearance.
See how much trouble you can get yourself into.
The event is called All That Matters but the theme is All That Metas. I’ve registered MetaMatters.com. I even own MetaMetas.com but we had that before a certain person changed the name of his company. It’s not worth doing an event called FacebookFacebook.com but All That Matters is the theme. Jamie, you’re welcome.
I am appreciating the classic British puns.
Jasper, I’m curious. You have this wealth of experience with All That Matters, music, sports, entertainment, and all these other tracks, some of which haven’t made a meaningful bridge over to Web3. What’s the feedback you’re getting from folks that are going to be there?
The first year we brought gaming into the event, they were the cool kids. That’s what our existing community is looking forward to. It’s seeing a bunch of people they have never met before. We are calling it the Great Reconnect because this is the first time everyone had a chance to come back together and then don’t have to wear face masks. That’s proof that I was getting up at 5:55. They can drink beer and hang out with each other again but this time, at some point, there are going to be these cool kids that they don’t know walking into the room.
I say this a lot but it’s a little bit like organizing a school disco because everyone gets bashful going like, “Who’s that?” They start talking and end up humping each other’s legs, swapping business cards, and making digital babies and stuff. It’s going to be fun. If you look at the music business, everyone is talking about NFTs but do that many people understand what they are and how to use them?
I’m Web2 when it comes to this but when we did Music Matters in 2021, we had Ed Shapiro, a wonderful lawyer from Reed Smith. Someone said to him, “How do I launch an NFT or sign?” He said, “Don’t do it for the money. Do it for a community build. If you make money on the back of it as well, that’s fantastic.” There’s going to be stuff like that. We want the new kids to be imparting their knowledge to the more traditional people but also the brief to them all is, “I don’t want to know what you’re doing in the future.”
“Don’t give me a three-letter acronym about something that’s going to be brilliant in a year’s time. Give me something that you’ve done now. Tell me what worked. If it didn’t work, tell me. How can I learn from that and take it into my business?” In the music industry here, everyone is embracing it but they have always got one SVP of whether it’s NFT, crypto, or stuff like that. Those people are going to be important in bridging those gaps as well.
I would love to dive a little bit deeper for a moment on the Gaming Matters Academy because we’ve got a gamer on the show. You have Blizzard and Epic Games. These are companies we have already mentioned on the show. You’re doing this major educational push, which we find important. That’s what we did with NFTLA. It has been a pleasure getting to know you and experiencing your ethos around bringing everyone together the same way that we try to do. Talk a little bit about the academy and what people could experience by going through the gaming academy or one of the other academies that you’re producing.
When you have the name Matters in your name, you have to walk the talk. We have always thought that if we’ve got these incredible global leaders in the room or on stage being very clever talking about the future of whatever industry, let’s get them backstage after and get them to meet the next generation, whether that’s young creators in the online space, young musicians, and young sports people or people trying to get into the sports industry and similarly, the game industry. Let’s give them some money-can’t-buy advice on running careers and running businesses and stuff like that.
We ran a gaming academy online. None of it was about how to win a game and be a good gamer. It was more about how to run a business. Similarly, in our music academy, for years, I’ve stood up in front of about 200 musicians in a room and said, “Hands up, who’s got a business plan?” Not once in years has anyone gone. They’re looking at me like, “I’m in a band. I’ve got a new tattoo. I’ve spiky hair.” We say, “What’s your vision? Where do you want to be in five years’ time?” “I want to be the biggest rock and roll band in India.” “How are you going to get there?”
We start teaching them how to have a vision, think about a business, and have a plan. The academies are very much business-driven. We do end up with some cool people. When it’s live, we don’t tend to film it, which sounds a bit strange because this information that comes across is so important but a lot of our speakers go to the heart. They do talk about some personal things that they may not want to broadcast to the outside world and stuff. It’s not necessarily sex, drugs, and rock and roll but it’s cool stuff. We’re doing three academies. We’re doing one for the arts industry, the music industry, and the sports industry.
For sports in this part of the world, it’s not a cool career at all. If you think about it if you’re in the US, the UK, or any of those countries where you want to work in the sports business, your parents think it’s the coolest thing on the planet because they’re going to get free tickets for shit but if you are in most parts of Northeast and Southeast Asia, China, Hong Kong, or Singapore, and if you go to your parents and say, “I want to work in the sports industry, mum,” they’re like, “You’re so sweet.” You’re encouraged to go and be an accountant.
I’m not being culturally wrong here. The sports industry is not credible yet. What we’re trying to do is create credibility in sports. Gaming is next. Can you imagine a kid telling his parents that he or she wants to work in the gaming industry? We’re trying to help at that point make credibility. That’s putting a thimble under a waterfall but it’s good fun. The speakers at the academies have way more fun at the academies than they do on the main stage because they get to talk about themselves.
I’m thinking you could have a serious case of FOMO because you’re in all these different areas in your career.
It’s cool hearing you talk about the workshops where you bring in those people together because that’s how I started my career, to be honest. Somebody came into my school when I was fourteen and was like, “You can design cars.” I was like, “What?” It set me on the path to where I am now. I’ve been fortunate enough to have the opportunity to do some of those things.
We have been able to talk to the younger generation coming out of college. I appreciate that you don’t film it because having been that person talking to a group of people, you can connect with them when you don’t feel like you’re on stage. You can flow and get into questions. It’s a much better way to help people and give some of the wisdom that you may have or hopefully have.
It allows the audience to ask personal questions as well. It’s a cultural thing that in a lot of countries in this part of the world, you’re not encouraged to ask questions when you’re at school because it means that you didn’t understand. If we say to people, “You’re in a safe place or Chatham House. No one is going to repeat this,” you get some wonderful things.
We had Linkin Park’s tour manager join us a couple of months after Chester Bennington sadly passed on. I thought he was going to blow us out. He called me and said, “Can I still come? I want to talk about mental health.” It was the most moving session ever. It was an opportunity for artists to voice their concerns about how hard it is to be an artist.
You create what you think is the greatest song of all time and release it. No one listens to it. Think about that when we are running businesses. Josh, we were in a meeting together working together if someone says no to us, that sucks but that’s the company. They’re not saying no to Josh and Jasper. We can switch it off. If you’re in any creative art and someone says no to you, how do you switch? How do you divorce yourself from yourself? That’s some of the stuff we’re trying to do to help.
The wellness side of things is important. We’re going to have a wellness track at NFTLA. Web3 burnout and burnout in general in the current pace of this world is critical. I watched the new Elvis movie. It’s a great movie. It showed him as a human being instead of the icon that we know him as. I highly recommend it. Jasper, I’m so excited to be part of this event. I encourage everyone to sack some tickets. We will release a code for 10% off for everyone that wants to come to Singapore and hang out with me, you, and maybe Jamie. Maybe Jdizzle himself is going to make an appearance.
Jamie, this is a live invitation. You can come to Singapore. Are you based in the US or the UK?
I’m in Seattle.
If you come, I will put you on stage at one of our academies or somewhere. You will do some great things for a lot of Asian people live.
I appreciate that. Let me get back to you. If I can, I’ll be there.
That is from September 26th to the 28th, 2022. Jasper, where should we send folks to make sure they can get all the details on this?
It’s very simple. Go straight to the website AllThatMatters.asia. Everything is there. There are 140 speakers, 3 stages, 3 academies, and 30 bands. It’s all on the website.
It’s going to be a great time. We also wanted to note for our readers that we do have a little giveaway. That’s going to be two GA tickets to All That Matters. It’s a highly sought-after event with highly sought-after tickets. Jasper, thank you so much for the generosity there. For our readers, keep an eye out on our socials for all the details that you need to get a chance at winning those tickets. Thank you, Jasper. Thanks for joining us.
I can’t wait to see Josh and Jdizz in Singapore.
Thanks so much. I’ll talk to you soon.
That’s great stuff. We’re excited about that. It would be cool if you could make it. That’s a little short notice, Jamie.
I love Singapore though. Singapore is a great place. It has been a long time since I’ve been.
I’ve never been there. This will be my first. I’m looking forward to it.
It’s awesome. It will blow your mind.
We wanted to move on to our next segment, which is a little short section where we like to give a little bit of love to folks that are moving the needle for us in our lives. It’s a little shout-out that we like to do here. Jamie, we wanted to turn the floor over to you to give a little love to those people moving the needle in your life.
Thank you. There are so many. Do you know any of those days when you start work and you’re like, “This is not going how I want it to go.” My little kid is called Yoshi. He ran in and was like, “Papa, I need to give you a kiss.” It was the perfect time to diffuse me. I was about to explode. Here’s a shout-out to that little monkey. Here’s a big shout-out to some of the teams. Blankos’ team is working so hard to put everything they can into Blankos for the Epic Games Store launch.
Mythical Games: A lot of people don’t know just how much effort goes in behind the scenes of making a video game. There’s a ton of people working really hard to bring some really cool stuff.
I have to give a huge shout-out to them. Every single person involved in that project is crushing it. Here’s a big shout-out to them and also to our NFL team, Rivals, Rarity League, and the people on the BD team like Mac, Christian, Billy, and Samantha. I’ve said names. I’m going to forget somebody but that whole crew crushing it. You don’t know how much effort goes into behind-the-scenes making a video game. There are a ton of people working hard to bring some cool stuff. Here’s a big shout-out to them. We’re so proud of you all. Please keep kicking ass. You’re doing an amazing job.
Much love. We do want to make sure our readers know where to go to see the efforts of all these teams that have been putting in so much work. Where should we direct them?
The best place to go is MythicalGames.com. You can link through all of our products from there. We did an overhaul on the site. We have a single-domain strategy. You can go there and find out every single product we’re working on. That will link you through. You can even sign up for some stuff. If you’re going to click some of the products there, you might even see some sites that are not quite official yet. Go take a look at MythicalGames.com.
Check out MythicalGames.com. All the goodness is over there. We have reached the outer limit at the show. Thanks for exploring with us. We have space for more adventures on this starship, so invite your friends and recruit some cool strangers that will make this journey all so much better. How? Go to Spotify or iTunes, rate us, and say something awesome. Go to EdgeOfNFT.com to dive further down the rabbit hole. Look us up on all major social platforms by typing EdgeOfNFT to start a fun conversation with us online. Lastly, be sure to tune in next time for greater NFT content. Thanks again, Jamie, for sharing this time with us.
Thanks for having me.
Thanks, Jamie.
Important Links
- Mythical Games
- All That Matters
- NFTLA.live
- Blankos Block Party
- Activision Blizzard
- CryptoKitties
- Unity
- Unreal
- Epic Games Store
- NFL Rivals
- Rarity League
- Nitro Nation World Tour
- Atari
- NFT.nyc
- Cosmos
- Fetch.ai – Previous episode
- Warhammer 40,000
- Branded
- Animoca Brands
- Gaming Matters Academy
- Spotify – Edge of NFT
- iTunes – Edge of NFT
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