Dylan Abruscato | Crypto The Game Is Going Viral

Because like the chance of winning is very, very slim. Yep. So it's not like, oh, I'm playing this game and I'm going to win this. Like, you really— most people don't.

Yeah.

So what do you think is driving the attention?

I think it's just the fact that it feels like an actual reality show, at least from everyone I've spoken to. People just like tell me how much fun it is. I don't know. There's just— there's something about live. You never know what's going to happen when you're live. You can get betrayed at the last second. You can, you know, there are hidden immunity idols that we hide throughout. It's just like Full of drama and twists and turns. And

today's guest is Dylan Abruscato, the creator of Crypto: The Game, which was acquired by Uniswap. Crypto: The Game just wrapped up its 3rd season last month in March, and the winner took home a prize pot of 71.6 ETH, which was worth about $150,000 at the time. That's a lot of money. And there were over 700 players from around the world and over 7,300 hours spent by these gamers playing the game. I'm excited to have Dylan on today to talk about this game, how he built a game that people actually want to play in crypto, and more. Dylan, welcome to the show.

Thanks so much for having me.

This is great. Thank you for being here. Yeah, you laughed at that, but it's true, isn't it?

I know. Yeah, I don't even remember which part I laughed at, but, uh,

about playing a game that people actually

want to play. Oh yes, I know, I know. I think there's a secret sauce, but we can get into that.

We will get into that for sure. Before we do that, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you even ended up in this space? Why create this game?

Sure. Yeah, I started my career in TV. We were talking a bit about that off camera just in the setup and prep, but was an NBC page out of college, worked at Saturday Night Live for a season, which was insane and so much fun, and could probably spend a whole episode talking.

What season was that?

This was season 38, which is kind of like the end of the Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, Jason Sudeikis era, but also the beginning of the Kate McKinnon era.

Wow.

It was actually also the only season where Tim Robinson was a cast member. No way.

I don't know if you watched that. I watched that show.

Oh, amazing. Yeah, so he was a cast member for one season. I don't think anyone realizes that because all of his sketch ideas and pitches that later became I Think You Should Leave sketches just never landed or made it on the air, and it just wasn't a fit. So he left, did his own thing, but it was a pretty magical season in my opinion.

Okay, so SNL.

Yeah, fully bit by the live TV bug. Bounced around a bunch of shows and networks and studios, just kind of trying to make it as a live TV producer, and stumbled upon tech by way of HQ Trivia, which was a live interactive game show.

I remember HQ Trivia.

Okay, great. But yeah, really joined for the grand vision of the future of live TV and a live interactive TV network. So in the same way that HQ took a traditional TV game show and made it live and mobile and interactive, the same could have and should have been said for a Shark Tank format or a talent competition, Or a dating show, or in my mind as a huge Survivor fan, a Survivor competition. So I actually pitched the idea for what is now CTG internally at HQ as a future show. And yeah, really just bounced around a bunch of different startups after HQ. Personally found myself playing around on crypto Twitter and our corner of the internet. But after the most recent startup I was at, pitched a couple of engineers who worked with me on this idea of a live interactive survivor game show for the internet, and luckily they were down to build it with me, and that's kind of how we got here.

It's funny you say that because I also see Crypto the Game, or CTG as we could call it, as a survivor, like Squid Game type of game. It feels like high pressure but also strategy-based about alliances and stuff, right? Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, it's a fully social game. So even though it's called Crypto the Game, it's so much more like a game show or reality Mhm. Reality show and a social strategy game than anything else. So it's been compared to The Traitors and Mafia and kind of those more strategy-based games. But basically every day over the course of 10 days follows the same format of a different immunity challenge in the morning. So think classic arcade games or scavenger hunts or crypto puzzles. Everyone's divided into tribes. The winners of those challenges win immunity, and then everyone else is basically up for elimination. And people are voted out each night. So if you don't win immunity, it just immediately turns into this game of like, who should we align with? Who should we vote out? Who should we eliminate? People are pleading their case for why they should stay. I'm great at the challenges, you should keep me. Or I'm not good at the challenges and I'm not a threat. Or I'm here to make friends. Or people choose why to eliminate people for a handful of reasons. And then basically over the course of 10 days, we whittle it down to one winner.

Okay. And when they're eliminating people, what are the common reasons they do eliminate people? Because they're threats, or— that would be my— I would go for the threats.

I feel like there's a handful of reasons. It's like, either you're too good at the challenges and you know as maybe a seasoned player or a Survivor fan that eventually the tribes merge and it becomes an individual game, or you're just not holding your own and you're bringing the team down in a lot of these team-based challenges basically, and you're just kind of cutting dead weight. A lot of folks who are I'd say more recognizable in the space that play get out pretty quickly because folks assume, you know, maybe they don't need the money. Or—

That's interesting, yeah.

Yeah, I don't know, maybe someone tweeted something snarky about the place you work, or I have no idea.

I would be eliminated because I tweeted, I don't understand how this game works and I'm afraid to ask. It's like, it's literally every single season, it is my whole entire Twitter feed.

Yeah, it's crazy.

And that's a win for you. For sure. It's also pointing to like, the virality and obsession that people have with this game?

Yeah, we definitely bake kind of like virality into a lot of the product decisions. So some of that is manufactured, and it's so cool to see. But I think genuinely people just like love this thing and go all in. And I think when we were ideating it and building it, I kind of assumed folks would log on around noon, register a score of that day's challenge. Maybe they made an alliance with someone that they knew from work or from Twitter. kind of came back on that night to vote, but it just really ballooned into this 24/7, all-in crypto reality show where if you're inactive for even a few hours, you're kind of assumed that you're not in it and dead weight.

Yeah, I was gonna ask that. So for those 10 days, the people who keep making it day after day, are they just avoiding their jobs and focusing on your game? What is the time commitment for this?

So yeah, I mean, if you play all 10 days, you kind of have to play all 10 days. I always tell people that you basically only have to play as much as you want to play.

Okay.

As is the case for a lot of crypto-native apps, people become very, very obsessed with it and kind of go all in, and that's kind of self-inflicted. I will say the folks that win usually play a lot all day, every day. I know people that took PTO to play CTG. I know people that were able to expense their entries because the whole industry plays, and it's such good networking for their projects or protocols. And then I know people who are working but playing in the background.

Yeah, we don't name those people. Yeah, we let them continue to do that. Okay, so how does the game work? Can you explain it to us?

Yeah, for sure. So basically there's an entry period before each season where you mint an NFT which represents your spot in the game. There's kind of like a countdown until tribes are assigned and the game begins. But once you kind of mint that NFT, you have an entry into into the game. At a certain point each season, the entries lock, the tribes are assigned, everyone is basically— it all happens on CryptoTheGame.com, but you can interact with your tribe chat. You can basically see because of Twitter connections who is on your tribe, and it's kind of up to you to then basically form your alliances on or off the platform. Then the first voting period is usually that day. There's something that we do where you basically have to connect your Twitter account and tweet that you're playing for individual immunity on night 1, which we initially did for awareness purposes, but it's a pretty easy way to wean out those that are inactive and don't tweet. So first night's usually pretty chill. And then basically over the course of the next 9 days, there's a daily immunity challenge and a voting period each night where the field is eliminated. Because the entries are NFTs and they're not soul-bound until you're fully eliminated, it kind of introduces this deal-or-no-deal mechanic where as you get closer to the finale and further in the game, you could hypothetically cash out and sell your spot to someone that wants to enter kind of halfway through or right before the finale. So we definitely see some kind of like only possible on crypto rails secondary action.

They're like, yeah, I'll bet on that. I'll take your entry point near the end. Yeah.

Or I have a couple friends that— or players that have become friends that just get eliminated and just buy back in every single night. They need to keep playing. They

already took the PTO.

Yeah, exactly. What else are they gonna do? And then on the last day, everyone that was previously eliminated comes back on and casts their votes for the winner. So you can't just kind of backstab your way to the top, and you almost have to play this ruthless but respected game. But it all takes place on CryptoTheGame.com. Like any good reality show, there are tons of twists and turns and drama kind of throughout the way. So this year we did a tribe swap. So everyone was assigned their tribe, kind of made their alliances, and then a couple days in we completely shuffled it. Everyone had a new tribe. The next day we then did something called the choice where you had the choice similar to that kind of Squid Game or that meme of 2 buttons where you could either return to your original tribe Or stay with your new one, and that just caused infinite chaos. Folks were double agents and in different chats. Oh,

wow.

Yeah, really just chaos kind of ensues on the game and people are just eliminating each other.

Is there any video aspect to this?

So there is a live companion show that Boys Club hosts every night. Boys Club. Yeah, they're the best. But it's kind of like our watch what happens live or after the final rose, and they start going live with players basically during the voting period, and you kind of see that like immediate reaction in real time. And then they just recap the day's drama, the villain arcs, the fan favorites, partially for those that are playing, but then also for basically like the broader community that wants to follow along and have a favorite.

Right.

But that's probably the easiest way. Plus a lot of like UGC.

It feels like a very crypto-native type of game. Like this is for people who are within the crypto industry. Is that fair to say?

Yes and no. I will say that It is an idea that we had, or I had long before there was a crypto component, and we were basically about to ship it without any crypto rails as such.

It was just called The Game.

Yeah, basically.

Crypto: The Game.

Yeah, something. I don't know what we would've called it, but I knew that we needed to basically bootstrap the pot, and I knew that I could never convince hundreds of my normie friends basically to spend the equivalent of a couple hundred dollars on a new game show. And There are a bunch of other reasons why we built it on crypto rails, but I think other than the fact that you mint the NFT which represents your spot in the game and the prize is in ETH, pretty much everything else is off-chain. The voting's off-chain. All 3 of us, my 2 co-founders and I, didn't have a very crypto-native background before this. And so we see about 10 to 15% normies each season, either friends of mine or folks that have been following along since the HQ days and want to see what we're up to. Next,

or they said it's easy to do. They, they got along fine. Did they make it far?

Yeah. Yeah. I don't, I don't know if any normie has ever won.

One of these seasons they've gotta win.

I know.

That'll really get you the main—

Maybe season 4 we'll do like normies versus, uh, crypto natives or something.

That'd be pretty funny.

Yeah.

I was thinking about that. So in terms of the buy-in, it's 0.1 ETH. Is that always gonna stay the same regardless of ETH's price? Are you gonna do like—

Probably just 0.1 ETH.

Yeah. Yeah. Right. It is what it is. Um, or would it be like a higher value for maybe like more serious people? Or lower value for people who just want to try it out? Would you do different price points?

Yeah, I've thought a lot about it. I think if there are too many players, one, I think it's really hard to whittle it down to one person at the end, but then also it kind of just feels like on voting periods you're just randomly selecting names you've never heard of and have no ability to connect with, whereas 70-ish people per tribe feels like a nice way to kind of immediately Mhm. Get to know at least everyone initially. So I think if it were too cheap to play, you would essentially just have too many players. I've also thought about a whales-only game, but I don't know if that's as fun. What about— So it seems like we've hit the sweet spot of it's not necessarily going to break the bank, but there's enough friction that it's not going to have The floodgates open.

0.1 ETH at the time for season 3 was what, like $200? Yeah. So you have to be committed.

For sure. For sure.

But then again, crypto people throw around money like it's made up, which—

Yeah.

Up for debate. No, I'm kidding. Um, in terms of the guests, or I mean players for season 3, I read the Wired article.

Yeah,

it was— one of them was a journalist. She— he went undercover, right?

So cool.

And you talked a lot about making alliances and stuff, so do people really have to be themselves to play this game? I read the article, I think that player specifically made it to day 8, so maybe you don't have to be yourself, but do you think it's to your advantage to expose and show your true identity?

Not necessarily. Our season 2 winner was anonymous.

Oh,

okay. We called season 2 a non-island and gave the ability to either play as yourself or play anonymously. Season 3, so for the Wired reporter specifically, he created a fully basically different persona. So he was doxxed and playing as Leo, but Leo was a made-up person.

Leo was not him.

It was just himself. So I don't know for season 3 because we removed the ability to play anonymously and treated it as just like there was a different twist for season 3, which we can talk about as well. But I think it helps to To play as yourself, especially if you want to win. Because at the end of the day, because everyone that was previously eliminated comes back on and votes for the winner, you do have to do a bit of campaigning and storytelling and like convince the jury basically why you're deserving of the win. And I personally think that you can only do that if you're a real person.

Yeah.

But that was—

I mean, season 2 was anonymous. I guess they were real, but they were anonymous.

Yeah, exactly.

And I believe I read that the season 2 winner Also said that they would donate the funds to Tornado Cash engineers.

Am I getting that correct? Yeah, yeah, nice. Yeah, so kind of alluding to what I was saying, it's like you have to have a compelling story at the end to garner the votes of all the previously eliminated players. And for season 2, the player that won basically publicly said that if they won, they would donate all the winnings to the relief efforts of the Tornado Cash devs, and that garnered the support of the players. And that's kind of the beauty of the game is the players ultimately crown the winner, which is really fun and unique.

Yeah. That is nice that they gave it to that individual because it's like, oh, at the end of the day, I'd rather this go to benefit some bigger cause than just me collecting all this money, which there's no problem with you also collecting the money, but that was a nice Yeah. I think everyone rallied behind.

Yeah, I mean, the season 3 winner, there was no cause or promise or pledge for the funds.

She said, I want to get a down payment. No, I don't know what she said.

Yeah, I don't know what she's doing with the money either, but there was no donation angle this season. And there's always a pretty heated debate amongst the players. It's like, pot splitting comes up every season where if I win, I'm going to give everyone their money back, or if I win, I'm going to, you know, Give 0.2 ETH to everyone that voted for me. And there's always a, you know, it's an interesting strategy and it's never worked, but it's something that comes up every single season.

That's interesting. I would think that would work.

Yeah. I don't know. I think if you're, personally speaking, if I were playing a game for the chance to win 71 ETH and I dedicated 10 days to doing so, I don't know if I would be happy with like making my money back. I don't know. Yeah, yeah.

That's true. Well, no doubling it. Yeah, that's true.

Come on.

Yeah, you double things in the public markets, people get excited. For us, we're like, no thanks.

I know, I

know. Um, what about a celebrity season? I know that the crypto celebrities like Jesse Pollock, the creator of Base, has participated. Yeah, the DJ 3LAU, which is pronounced Blau, has, uh, participated, and others. I feel like that would be entertaining to watch for

sure. Yeah, I would love that. Uh, I,

I gotta rally up the troops. I know, I feel like we're getting there.

I mean Yeah, Justin Blau played, Packy McCormick has played all 3 seasons. These are all kind of like internet celebrities, but Bored Elon Musk, the Twitter account with a couple million followers, has played each season. So I would love if a trad celebrity played, but I would have to think about basically how to get it in front of them.

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Yeah, so, uh, my goal is basically to have each season be its own unique social experiment. So season 2 was Anon Island. You had the ability to play anonymously. An anonymous player ultimately won. Um, season 3, we called it Resurrection Island. Um, and similar to like Last Chance Kitchen, if you watch Top Chef, but, uh, if you get eliminated, uh, or if you got eliminated during season 3 of CTG, you basically went to a different version of the island on the site and had the ability to earn earn your spot back in the competition. And interestingly, Ted, who ultimately won, was voted out and came back into the game and ended up winning. So I thought it was very cool to basically see folks fight for their spots back.

Yeah. No, that's amazing. So you have to fit the theme of the season to win, is the takeaway. Exactly, exactly. What was season 1? Or there wasn't one yet.

Season 1 was just crypto, the game. It was just to try it. Yeah, I kind of just tweeted it out. I I had no idea it would take off. We built it on mainnet, you sent 0.1 ETH to our multisig, and at the end of it we sent the pot to the winner. It was kind of like, yeah, more of like an experiment. And yeah, 410 people played season 1, and the winner was based in Japan, doesn't speak a word of English, played overnight because it is a live show basically catered towards American time zones.

Mhm.

And just kind of like won over the heart of like, Wow. Yeah, it's a pretty heartwarming ending.

What do you think has driven people to be, one, interested and so obsessed with this? Because the chance of winning is very, very slim. So it's not like, oh, I'm playing this game and I'm going to win this. Most people don't. So what do you think is driving the attention?

I think it's just the fact that it feels like an actual reality show, at least from everyone I've spoken to. Ted, who won, has told me she applies for Survivor every season. I personally apply every season, never got a call. Yeah, have you ever applied to a reality show?

Oh no, I can't survive Survivor. I love watching it. Okay.

I think I felt this way at HQ as well. It's like I would watch game shows all the time, but I think since that came out, gone are the days of kind of watching strangers play game show formats. And I genuinely feel that way about reality TV since CTG launched. It's like someone like Ted or MFL who won season 1 from Japan would never be cast in a traditional reality show. But I think in the back of their minds everyone wants to play. And this is basically a version of those traditional reality show formats that they can play online with their friends. So it kind of scratches the itch of being a reality star. Maybe you'll get covered on the Boys Club companion show. And people just tell me how much fun it is. I don't know, there's something about live. You never know what's going to happen when you're live. You can get betrayed at the last second. You can, you know, there are hidden immunity idols that we hide throughout. It's just like full of drama and twists and turns. And it seems like it's pretty unique to this particular game.

Yeah, I think it's so interesting too because the reason I asked if there's like the video component is because like, I feel like it's hard to create that type of dynamic and excitement when it's just like messaging on a chat board, right? Is that how it works? Like through a Telegram or something?

Yeah, there are Telegrams. We have like an in-app chat as well. All games take place on the site, but we took a lot of design efforts to make it look and feel like you were kind of on an island 24/7. So there are kind of waves in the background of the interface throughout the entire time. If it's a voting period or an immunity challenge, those waves will get very choppy. There'll be lightning in the background, there's dramatic music. If you happen to survive and you make it to the next morning, The sun is out, the waves are calm, and it kind of like gives you that sense that you survived another night. So just from like visual effects and music and like different things we've built into the look and feel of the game, it really feels like you're on an island. But I don't know, something about like a live host or like live footage of players like didn't feel right for me just yet.

Yeah, maybe season 4.

Yeah, who knows?

What about season 4? Is there anything you can or cannot

Yeah, I

don't know. How much you can say. There's probably a lot you can't.

Yeah, so I love CTG, but at the same time, there are so many other formats and shows and games and things that I want to build as well. So I referenced this earlier, but in the same way that HQ had the one trivia show, it could have and should have had shows for every other linear TV show format. So I'm currently very excited about this Amazing Race format where it's much more skill based and kind of leverages a lot of the challenges, but it's a bit more basically like the bottom X% of players to finish each checkpoint or challenge are eliminated each night, which removes a bit of the social elements, but it's a completely different format. All this is to say that I'm hoping to basically build future seasons of CTG in parallel with developing new formats and kind of fulfilling that dream of a live interactive crypto TV network.

Okay. So other games and shows can run parallel and/or like crossover.

That's the thinking. I mean, having said that, we just wrapped season 3 and haven't fully like put pen to paper yet on these ideas, but it's definitely in the back of my mind.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, think big. Why not?

Yeah. Yeah. Let's

keep going. CTG was also acquired by Uniswap.

Yes.

How did that come about?

So Uniswap sponsored a challenge during season 2 of CTG. So we had about 6 sponsors during season 2, one of which was Uniswap, one of which was Adidas, which was incredible, Lens and Wormhole and a bunch of other crypto-native companies. We hadn't raised any money for CTG and kind of just bootstrapped season 1, it went pretty viral, kind of leveraged that momentum to build season 2, and kind of just realized after 6 months of working 24/7 that we needed to I don't know, figure out a way to keep this thing going. Yeah. We thought about raising venture dollars, and I don't know, something about it didn't necessarily scream venture play to me. And yeah, met with a bunch of basically sponsors at the end of season 2, and a couple conversations happened organically. And yeah, basically working at Uniswap has kind of given us the ability to keep doing what we do best, which are these viral on-chain marketing stunts just under the the lab's umbrella with a paycheck, which is nice.

There you go. That's good. I was gonna say, how did you do that for 6 months with like— because there is no revenue model for it, is there? Or is that a percentage of that 0.1 ETH goes towards—

For seasons 1 and 2, we took 10% of the pot. And for season 2 as well, we did sponsors or sponsorships.

So we had—

it was basically like very high margin ad revenue. So we had— and then also royalties from the secondary sales of the NFTs. So we did have 3 pretty nice basically revenue streams after season 2. But yeah, for season 3, we didn't take a cut of the pot or do any pay-to-play sponsorships, which I think the players appreciated. But yeah.

Yeah. You mentioned Adidas. That was the non-crypto sponsor for season 2. How did that come about?

Dream come true. They reached out at the end end of season 1. Similar to what you were saying, it was kind of all over their timelines. I think they were thinking of maybe getting back into crypto.

The crypto game.

Yeah, I think they did a couple things last cycle or the first cycle. And you're a fellow Survivor fan, I think you mentioned.

Yes.

But one of my favorite episodes each season is the auction challenge, and I always wanted to do some sort of auction for CTG. So we created basically co-branded CTG and Adidas tracksuits for each of the tribes. That's cool. Yeah. auction them off to players. And there was like an NFT version of them and players bid on them and they're just like very cool co-branded collectibles.

Yeah. So did they ever get a physical version too?

No physical version.

No. I had a feeling it would be like an NFT type, like skins thing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it looks just like the tracksuit and there was one for each color tribe. And who knows, maybe we'll do IRL tracksuits one day. But based on when we spoke to them and when season 2 was launching, it was just like, and production timelines to create physical tracksuits. It was just way easier to make NFT versions.

Yeah. You said no sponsors in season 3. Why is that?

I think it was just like we weren't necessarily like— we had a bunch of partners and I can chat about that, but we weren't just personally incentivized to charge ad revenue for the challenges. There were some subtle Uniswap integrations. We built it on UniChain, which is a new L2. We gave Uniswap Wallet and the Uniswap extension preferred placement for those that were logging in and minting their NFTs. But no one wanted it to feel too much like an ad. And then we did some integrated partnerships with folks like Farcaster where we did a Farcaster-specific challenge, which was kind of like a rabbit hole through the Warpcast ecosystem. But we didn't have just the personal incentive to try to like charge folks for those spots basically. And really we're just trying to focus on like making it as player-centric as possible.

I was going to ask because Uniswap is one of the largest, if not the largest decentralized exchange out there, and as you mentioned there's UniChain as well, so it's built on top of that as well now. How do you see that as like an advantage to the game going forward? Are there things that you could do now that you couldn't do before? Or certain areas that you could tap into that wasn't possible.

Yeah, I think like Uniswap Labs in particular is just like so incredible at building consumer-grade crypto products. And, uh, Brian Tai and myself, my 2 co-founders and I, uh, were very green to crypto, uh, before CTG. And kind of like the amount of on-chain integrations and elements that we were able to build ourselves was very, very minimal. So just like through osmosis learning about on-chain consumer products through the team and being able to like tap into internal resources, uh, whether that be design or fellow marketers or just like product and eng folks that can kind of like lend their take on like what would make this a more compelling crypto experience has been incredible and invaluable.

Yeah,

um, which has been nice.

Yeah, I feel like the fact that you weren't very crypto native and you were new to this might have actually been a benefit.

Oh, for sure. That is the secret sauce. Yeah.

I was gonna say, like, coming into this Making it so technical and crazy that like a lot of projects do.

Yeah, that's kind of why I chuckled at the top. But I think if we had sat down at a whiteboard and said, uh, we want to build a crypto game or, you know, a blockchain game, it never would have had the success that, that CTG has had. Um, it— we kind of started with the idea and basically like built out the entire game and then sat down and just decided that crypto made it more fun. That's kind of always my advice to founders that ask. It's like, come up with the idea first and then decide If, if building it on crypto rails or for crypto Twitter specifically makes it more fun or less fun. Um, and I think for us it did make it a lot more fun. Um, but it definitely was not a goal of ours.

Yeah. Was it hard, like without prior knowledge and background to kind of build on crypto rails?

Yeah, I am the non-technical of the 3 of us. So to me it was not, but, uh, Brian and Ty might disagree.

Yeah. Keep it up. Yeah.

No, I mean, Yeah. Huge shoutout to Privy for making logging in for our players incredibly easy and seamless. And no one knew basically that we were using Privy, but it just made connecting your wallet very, very simple and clean and easy. We also used Relay to kind of magically handle the bridging on the backend, which was incredible. And basically for a lot of my normie friends, they would have no idea what an L2 was or that they would have to bridge funds over or Their eyes kind of gloss over when I start to talk about that stuff. But as long as they had 0.1 ETH on any L2 or mainnet, literally in one click we handled the bridging magically in the background through Relay and they were able to mint their spot. So I think it was pretty normie-friendly and kind of easy to integrate those partners, but you'd have to ask Ty and Brian how technically easy it was.

I mean, that's how it should be though. I just click a button and if I have a wallet, I connect to it. If I don't, I figure it out, and then it's like straightforward, right? Would you ever do an option where you don't have to pay in ETH and you could actually just pay with like a credit card or something like that?

Yeah, I'd love that for sure. MoonPay, the brand, played this season. I don't know if you saw them tweeting about it.

No, I didn't, but I know MoonPay.

Yeah, yeah, you have to connect your Twitter account to play, and they played but like as MoonPay, which was so cool to see. So yeah, we're chatting with them.

They played?

I would love that, yes.

That's wild.

Literally the MoonPay account. Wow.

Have other brands played?

I'm trying to think. I think— do you know Autopilot? It's like the Nancy Pelosi stock tracker.

No, I don't, but that's hilarious.

Yeah. They played during season 2. I think those might be the only brands that have played. I think the folks behind the brands have played as individuals, but in terms of choosing to connect the brand account, I mean, it's a very fun marketing ploy.

Yeah.

But yeah, I think it got eliminated pretty early. Yeah. Like silence brand.

That's funny. Yeah. I mean, like, cuz it's a brand, like who, who is the brand? It's someone behind it playing. Yeah. Yeah. They sent the interns, you know, to go play.

Sean. Shout out Sean from Moonpay.

There you go. Oh, sorry. It's actually a person. Yeah. But you know what I mean? Like, yeah. If it's like McDonald's is playing, it's like, it's not all of McDonald's.

No, no, no.

Has to be one person at McDonald's.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I don't know how they would've handled the taxes of, of winning.

Everyone does at McDonald's. When is season 4?

It's a great question. I think so one of the things we learned, or at least I learned from HQ Trivia, was that you can't do the same thing at the same time kind of every day and expect people to come back and want more, at least for HQ because it was at the same time every single day. I kind of always make this reference or example that you wouldn't eat at the same Michelin-starred restaurant at the same time every day and expect to enjoy it. So it's been about 18 months and we've done 3 seasons. I think we're trying to be a lot more like traditional TV than HQ was and just embrace seasonality. So similar, I don't know if you're a fellow White Lotus fan or watcher.

I am watching it. No spoilers. Yeah, yeah.

No, I won't spoil it. But season 3 of White Lotus just ended and I think there's probably going to be a year or so before the next one airs. And I like that excitement. And right when we announce that it's coming back, everyone will immediately remember how much fun it was and they can't wait to play. Whereas I think if we do it too soon, just because it's so much of a time commitment, I don't necessarily know that we would the same level of engagement or excitement. So just trying to embrace seasonality and kind of see where— when it feels right for the players.

So 6 months?

I don't know.

All right, all right. There also probably could be a cap though, like as it becomes more popular. You said you don't want it to be like too many people to the point you don't know who you're voting on, right?

For sure.

So is there a cap that you would create?

Yeah, I think like 800 feels like the right cap. But transparently, we haven't spoken about like maybe we do more tribes so there are more players or kind of what that looks like. I do think for the This Amazing Race-style show that I was referencing, something like that would be able to be uncapped because it would be skill-based and kind of like percentage-based. And I like that as well. It's like I don't want there to be anyone that wants to play but can't.

So

we'll see.

Okay. I don't know how you think about things like this. I love watching these shows, but I don't have the mind for puzzles. I hate riddles, I hate puzzles. I like watching people solve them, but I'm not the type of person to solve them. That's why you asked if I would ever go on Survivor. That's where you lose me.

Yeah. I mean, so I played this CD-ROM game that was basically a Survivor game. It was called Survivor Ultimate. This is like early 2000s with my best friend every single day, and it was like the most rudimentary version of what is now CTG. You played tic-tac-toe for immunity, and you picked a season 2 cast member to play as. And I don't know, I'm kind of just building the game I always wanted to play, or at least the game I always wanted to play online with my friends. So I've never operated with so much certainty or conviction on anything in my career because I'm just building for myself basically. So if it were any other format or industry, I would have no idea what I was doing. Mhm. I don't know, as someone who's kind of dedicated my career to live interactive entertainment and has obsessively and religiously watched every episode of Survivor, it just kind of feels fun and easy to me.

You need to get Survivor cast members on.

I know, I know.

Like Traitors. Have you watched Traitors?

Yeah, of course.

You know how they have them?

Yeah, yeah. Sri and Parv and Rob.

And Boston Rob, exactly.

Yeah, that'd be amazing.

100% do that. Has Survivor taken notice of this yet?

If they watch my audition tapes, then yes. But I haven't I haven't received a callback, so I don't know.

Okay. And what's next for you, Dylan? Is it continue to do CTG as well as maybe another show?

Yeah, for sure. I think so. I think, you know, I truly genuinely believe that the future of TV is content that you can engage with. And I think I mentioned this already, but like, I have way less interest these days watching strangers and other people compete in reality shows and game shows. And I just would love to see a world in which every traditional linear TV format exists in some way, shape, or fashion on the internet. So I've been thinking about that for a really long time and I'll continue to do so. And crypto and crypto Twitter specifically and kind of our corner of the internet seems like the most ripe for those types of experiments.

Do you see opportunity to create non-Crypto: The Game or like a normal one where it's not crypto background? I don't even want to say crypto heavy because this game isn't crypto heavy.

Yeah, I think so. I mean, so season 1 was just called Crypto: The Game. And in every season that followed, we kind of started referring to it as CTG. So it was Crypto of the Game, then it was CTG Anon Island, and then it was CTG Resurrection Island. And maybe there is a world in which it's referred to by the masses as CTG, and there's, you know, sure, you have to buy a ticket basically to play, but no one actually knows what's under the hood. And I do think that's a great way to onboard the masses through reality TV formats. So who knows?

And do we have a name for the next

Not yet. I really want to do humans versus bots, which would be really fun. And I don't know, now you have me thinking about like an all-star season or a whales-only season or— yeah, I'm not quite sure yet.

It's like The Bachelor and then they do Bachelor Island.

Oh, yeah.

Bachelor of Paradise. Yeah, Bachelor of Paradise. Thank you. I'm combining too many names and TV shows here. But it's like where you do a spinoff to your own show with the people who—

Yes, yes, yes. I love it. Yeah, CTG All-Stars. There we go.

See, this is why we have you come on the pod to brainstorm.

Yeah, yeah, I love it. Um, for sure.

Amazing. Dylan, um, last thing I always ask my guests, can you leave us with a piece of advice, something you've carried with you throughout your career?

Yeah, I think it's really just to keep building for yourself. Like, if you're out there and you're listening and you're, you're thinking of what to do, and it's kind of like, uh, build as though you were the consumer. And, uh, you know, for, for CTG specifically, uh, I mentioned the Tribe That was something that kind of came about in the moment, and a friend who was playing called me and was very cocky and confident with their tribe and their position, and I just thought like, what would I like as a player and what would I do here? And shuffling the tribe just kind of felt naturally. And yeah, basically just like come up with an idea that you feel uniquely suited to build and build as though you were the end consumer.

I love it. Dylan, thank you so much for coming on. Thanks for having me.

This was so much fun. I

agree. I'll— I'm gonna try and play next season.

I hope so.

If I have the time.

Yeah.

Amazing. Thank you again, Dylan.

Thanks so much.