Brycent - Is Play-To-Earn Gaming Dead Already?

What I've been really kind of harping and proposing is that the whole ecosystem of how play to earn works currently in these utility tokens, it's pretty much dead.

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

What's up everybody? You're listening to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast with your boys, Matt Wolf and Joe Fear.

Hey, welcome back to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast. Today we are talking all about play to earn gaming with probably the biggest influencer in the play to earn gaming space right now. His name is Brycent and and he has a massive following on Twitter, Twitch and YouTube playing and talking about the current play to earn gaming space.

And today we're gonna talk to him.

About, well, where the space is at, where the space is heading, the biggest problems with the play to earn gaming space. We're gonna talk about some of the games that he's excited about, some of the games that he's playing right now. It's going to be a wide ranging conversation all about play to earn gaming. So if you're new to play to earn gaming and you're looking to invest in it or to play some games to earn for yourself, this is the episode to listen to.

Before we get into it, I want.

To remind you that Joe and I are putting together a little mini course online all about how to grow attention to whatever you're doing online. Whether you're trying to grow a personal brand, try to grow a business, whatever you're trying to get eyeballs on or earballs on or whatever you're trying to drive attention to. We've got the course for you, it's completely free and you can find out more over at attention. That's attention tips and we'll break down all of the strategies we've been using lately to gain more attention for some of these gaming companies and the various businesses that we're working with. So check that out once again over at Attention Tips. All right, let's go ahead and jump right in with Bryson.

All right, my man, we're live. Bryson, it's great to have you on the show here, man. And yeah, we've been watching you for a long time. Our whole group over here at Hard Fork and a lot of our buddies, Cryptolander, shout out to him for making this happen. Yeah, man. Bryson. So I don't know where we start. You're everywhere, man. You're, you're all over doing the twitch thing, the YouTube thing, the Twitter thing.

I'm seeing these Twitter spaces almost daily now. It's how often Are you doing those Twitter spaces?

So initially it was like a couple of times and now we're doing it like three times a week. Sometimes I'll pop on at night and host a random Twitter space because, like, there'll be some random news that happens in like the Web3 space. And I'm like, all right, let's see if we can get some spicy topics going. But yeah, I'm kind of wearing myself a little thin with the content, but it's, it's such early days. I feel like you have to double down on it.

Yeah, man. Well, you were mentioning you're like just trying to, trying to stay busy, but I mean, it was probably a joke. I'm sure you're just moving all the time, huh?

Yeah, it's, it's a lot of fun because, like, I'm handling two sides of things. So at one point I'm doing like content related stuff and working on some really cool integrations on that end. And then the next step, I'm like running and managing this whole loot squad guild and that entire ecosystem because, you know, we're venture funded and you know, we're looking to really build into something great. So it's like I have like kind of two sides to what my day looks like, but it's, it's incredibly chaotic. I have a, I have a trip planned to Boston this coming week and still haven't booked my flight in. My mom is literally like yelling at me day in and day out. So, yeah, I'm a little bit behind the eight ball.

Don't forget the family man. But yeah, it's easy to get swept up in this space like you said. But let's take it back a little bit because I know a lot of folks, including ourself, we know a little bit about the backstory, but it'd be really interesting because a lot of stuff has happened, what, in the course of a year or so for you, I think it is. So take us back because I know you did some startups and things before Web3, I think, showed up on your radar.

Yeah, totally. So before I jumped into the Web3 space, which happened in April of last year, previously before that I was a software engineer and had worked on, you know, a ton of different startups and ideas. I remember when I was in like college, I tried starting like a T shirt company because I really liked Johnny Cupcakes and what his whole T shirt brand was. And of course, like, it failed, but like, it was the experience of trying these different things that really cultivated a Higher level of understanding that ultimately I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. And my other idea before jumping into Web three was we were building an AI based platform for connecting recent college graduates to like career opportunities that align with things beyond the resume. So we would take like their interpersonal skills, their personality, their work preferences and like put it in this AI generator and it would come out and connect them with certain companies. But it wasn't an incredibly profitable venture and it was pretty boring to a lot of, a lot of VCs. So we didn't even raise any money. We couldn't even get into a single accelerator. And it got to the point where like April of last year, I just decided to take a break. So I took a break. I was listening to a podcast about a game called Axie Infinity and Andrew Steinwald was talking about Virtual Land in the Metaverse and all these things. And I was like, I don't really know what the hell this is, but he said it was similar to Pokemon. So I was like, okay, I'm just gonna dive in and I go home and realize I have no clue how to set up wallets and all of these weird things. And there's like eight steps to the onboarding process. So I pretty much quit it for like two days, then go back to it and eventually just go through the, you know, painful onboarding process of getting started. And it ended up being like the best decision from a career standpoint because I jump in and I don't really know what I'm doing. So I buy these high priced assets and I'm getting railed destroyed in the arena. So I go on Twitch and I'm like, how do I find somebody that's playing this game so I can learn how to play it? And it's like 7pm on the east coast and I'm looking and I'm like, wow, no one is streaming this game. It must be dead. Most people would think that, but I was like, wait, no one is streaming this game? I could potentially become that guy who's like the big streamer, the big content creator. And I just doubled down it and I started streaming and playing it and things took off incredibly rapidly. And I went from, you know, not having any viewers to becoming the face of like NFT gaming on Twitch. Axie Infinity as a category had like 47 people following it before I jumped into Twitch and now like my own brand, I have like 50k followers on, on, on Twitch alone. And the category now has 250,000 people following it. So it, it, it Definitely ballooned. And that's kind of how I got my start into Web3. But I realized like being an entrepreneur you start to find other entry points and ways that you can solve pain points in these ecosystems. And one of those was like these scholar models in these games I realized oh wow, like a lot of these are one, not really that sustainable and two, these business models for guilds aren't that defensible. So I was like okay with my brand. If we create something that just goes away and delineates from the norm and creates an ecosystem that can't be easily replicated, we could raise money, create a venture funded business and eventually launch something that you know, does like actually distribute true value. So we went the whole route of creating Loot Squad, which is an NFT gaming guild. But we don't focus on like asset lending. And you know, I don't know how your audiences knows about the whole scholar model. So I'll kind of take a step back. For those who don't know, you can buy these NFTs and video games and in developing nations people can play with those NFTs and earn, you know, three to five times the average income playing with them. So most of these models involve lending out NFT assets to gamers in developing nations. And then the guilds take a smaller percentage cut of what is earned in these games and that's how they make profit or revenue. This is great because from a philanthropic standpoint you're helping people around the world. But the problem is the people who come in and invest in these ecosystems often become exit liquidity for the guilds because you have all these players who are farming these in these, in game, you know, assets in these tokens. But no one's bringing money into the ecosystems and that's an issue that we predicted back last January. So our goal was how do we create a sustainable guild model that focuses on building scalable technology. And we're very close to launching something. I can't really say too much about it yet, but we went full tech route and we created something that we believe will be incredibly sustainable. But the idea behind all of this was my goal was how do I just add value to these different Web three gaming ecosystems. And I figured later on I would make the value back in one way shape or form. So people see me playing these games and things and they think, oh man, this is all he does. That's just like the front facing aspect of what we build. But the true value is in the tech and the back end stuff that people haven't seen yet. And that's what I'm excited to share with the world in the future. But NFT gaming, I think, has a very long way to go and we're in the early stages now.

We're so early, man. And right now I feel like everybody has ideas and now's the time for ideas and throw them out there and you know, you might not get funded or it might not actually work out, but at least throw it out there. There's gaps and like we're all just trying to figure this thing out. And yeah, the guild model. I know we're. It was funny because we were having conversations. Matt and I were with our Hard Fork team too, and he was bringing up similar concerns and with the Play to Earn model, just with just the economics of it all behind there and how. And how guilds relate to that and how the. Yeah, it's just very interesting how much power guild could have.

I've used Bryson a lot to prove my points.

You have?

I'll make a comment and then I'll be like, look, look what Bryson just said. And I'll send them a video clip of what you just said.

But it's. I mean, maybe. Yeah, yeah, but it's interesting, man. I think this is a good time to rework the guild model. We're actually chatting with Peter Ng from Blockchain Space later today. You know, a weird timing for the podcast listeners, but, you know, it's interesting because I want to hit him up and ask about kind of the guild model as well from his perspective. But maybe, maybe you could bring up some of the Play to Earn stuff, because I know that's a conversation we've been having a lot.

Yeah, I mean, the Play to Earn is. It's an interesting space, especially if you're watching Axie. And then another one that we've been kind of paying attention to a little bit is Pegaxy, where, you know, you get that you have these issues where there's the, you know, the governance token and then you've got the in game kind of economy token that you earn through playing the game. And I'm speaking more to the audience because I know you know this stuff, but you have.

I love talking about it.

You've got that, you've got these two tokens. But what ends up happening is if there's not enough utility for the in game economy token token, then people are just earning the token, but they have no real use for them other than breeding or just selling them and cashing them out. So what ends up happening is these coins just get inflated and then the price goes down, down, down, and then nobody wants to play the game anymore because there's no real value in the coin that you're earning. So where I'd like to explore with you is like, how, how does that get solved? Like, like in your opinion, where, where does it go from here to, to kind of fix that thing?

Man, this is a tough, this is a tough question because it's one that I've been trying to figure out since probably September is when I realized that we were all in this cycle of perpetuating BS that is thinking that game games can exist in a world where defi is the predicated solution and center focal point of the game, instead of like the overall entertainment value being higher. And I've seen a lot of people talk about the idea that the game only has to be more fun than someone else's traditional job. And the biggest problem with that is the whole idea that gaming at its very core root is supposed to be entertaining. It's supposed to be something that takes stress away and is culturally endemic to audiences around the world. Regardless of where you're from. If you look at like, you know, IRL games like soccer, people around the world play soccer. Even like, to quote like World War II, there was a point where they were saying that during Christmas, two different sides of the war actually got together for one day, ceasefire at night to play soccer, and then the next day they went back to shooting and killing each other, which is, you know, the, the dark side of that. But the idea is gaming, just like any other sport or thing in the metaverse, should connect people. But one thing that we've seen is that it actually is creating a larger disconnect because everything is so predicated on tokens. So when I think about solving this issue, it's very much game dependent. But from my like, standpoint, I think for the first thing that needs to happen is there needs to be more inclusivity around. You cannot be having people pay insane prices to get into these ecosystems. And games like, imagine spending $200,000 on land in a game that has nowhere near close to an actual viable land ecosystem. And how do you actually see the world getting, or you getting $200,000 back out of that? Or if you look at, you know, what's being built in all of these different games, anytime you have a utility token that isn't balanced or structurally sound, everything that you launch after that will always be subject to the value of that utility token. And the overall mantra and reputation that comes with, oh well, they don't really have a sustainable economy because this token is in the dir. So what I've been really like kind of harping and proposing is that the whole ecosystem of how play to earn works currently in these utility tokens. It's pretty much dead like if you follow the AXIE model, and I love Axie Infinity and they're actually changing their model to try to solve some of these problems. But if you follow that same model, as soon as you reach a point of max capacity where the gamers are just all playing for the token and no one is bringing money into the ecosystem because they actually love the game, you will always hit that inflation point and then the token will just ride its way back down. And like in the early days of axie, you had guilds coming in spending money because everybody wanted to make money, so there was money flowing into the ecosystem. But as soon as you reach that max capacity point where okay, we have enough guilds and we also see scholars starting to create their own guilds and boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. So from my perspective, I think a lot of what's being built in the play to earn space is very much predicated around the buzzword of play to earn, but not actually creating sustainability. And I think that for that next level, the next generation, a lot of these games shouldn't focus on scholars or in guild. I think you focus on going back into the Web2 ethos of getting players who want to play these games because the ecosystems are fun and go back into the idea of under promising and over delivering. Because right now it's hey, we're going to over promise you and get you to spend a ton of money and then there's no delivery point. What's stopping a game from going back to the model of just dropping a game title or saying hey, if you buy this $20 NFT, you get full access to the game instead of hey, you buy this thousand dollar or $5,000 asset to get full access of a game that hasn't happened yet, you probably make more money long run because your game is much more readily cheap for those who aren't in the web3 ethos to jump into. Like there's enough saturation in web3 currently we need to bring in gamers from web2 who can join these ecosystems and play games seamlessly without having to connect a wallet or understand how Web3 works as a whole. Let them learn that on their own as a byproduct of playing a fun game. But 99% of the games aren't doing that yet. And that's why we see all these ridiculous fluctuations in pricing and, and there will never be a world, in my opinion, where the economics of a game can outweigh the actual entertainment value or else you will run into the same instance.

Is this go back to, you know, it's called Play to Earn, but you've been saying Play and Earn recently, right? So how does that differentiate? Is that pretty much, you know, buy your way in with maybe a $20 NFT for instance, and then there's all these interesting assets and other fun elements inside the game that you can kind of earn through. So how would you, how would you describe the Play and Earn model?

That Play to Earn model is the, the initial idea that earning is a required byproduct of playing the game, like an Axie Infinity. If you play and you win any games, you automatically earn. Whereas in Play and Earn ecosystems, earning is just a side effect of entering these ecosystems, enjoying them and getting very good at them to actually earn, you know, high level NFT skins. Or maybe you get rewarded with a token. And I think that we see these ecosystems already in traditional games. Like for example, if you look at, you know, like a counter strike Global offensive, they had models that didn't involve token economies, but every single one of the skins in the game had its own individual generative ID that's separated from the other one. So even though you had like five skins in the game that looked exactly the same, they were pretty much NFTs before NFTs had their time. You just didn't have like true control over. So I think the Play, Play and Earn model is just creating a world where expectations are level set to understand that earning isn't an actual requirement of the game. It's just a byproduct of something that could potentially happen. But it has to start with removing inflationary token models as well. If I see any game that has like a, a utility token that you can mint endlessly, I'm never going to be bullish on the fact that there are enough burn mechanisms to keep that game afloat. Because if you think about it, it still is always predicated on whether or not you have enough new liquidity coming into the ecosystem to balance the economy. Like, how can you tell a scholar that is taking money out of a gaming ecosystem to eat or live that they're going to use a burn mechanism to get a new skin? It's not going to happen. And if you look at a game like Axie, where 95% of the player base is probably scholars. Even if you create a 10 burn mechanism, it doesn't mean they're going to be used.

Well, it seems like also like there's this kind of narrative in play to earn gaming where the. One of the big benefits is that you own the assets, right? You own the skin, you own the character, you own whatever the assets are. But it seems like any game that has a lending mechanism to it is sort of counter to that ideal. Right? Because if, if there's these lending mechanisms, what you end up getting is just a bunch of investors going in, owning all the assets and just lending.

Oh my goodness.

You know.

Oh man, you're really trying to make it spicy now. Yeah, if you think about it, it's no different than A. A Web2 record label owning the rights to someone's song by lending them money to go out and create more music. All guilds are are just glorified gatekeepers to Web three ecosystems and the games perpetuated because the games know that in the current standpoint, the guilds allow them to have a bit more liquidity by giving out large sums of assets. But in that same ethos, the guilds actually kill your games because if you look at pegaxy, once one guild dumped, the rest just followed suit all the way to the bottom. So it's like, yeah, you give up the organic building that's needed to create a game in the initial stages, but you kill your lifespan of your game by overestimating the value of what a guild ecosystem is going to bring to you. If it's not bringing gamers who are playing the games for fun. If everybody's playing for earning, I don't think there's ever a space where we truly reach a balance because the burn mechanisms won't matter, especially if those gamers are coming from developing nations.

This is interesting because I know a big thing. It's crazy. There's so many gamers out there because the stats, I think it's what, 3 billion gamers out there in total and what, like about 1ish percent? I think it's like 1 to 5% are in play to earn and it just seems like there's so much friction. I think like you mentioned, like setting up the wallets and all this stuff. But then even just owning, investing money into an asset and let alone maybe three assets to get started, it's just interesting. It's like if we just kind of take a step back and yeah, maybe there's one thing you got to buy one NFT that's maybe kind of simple to own or at least onboard into because seems like that onboarding process is kind of solved or smoothed out a little bit. I mean we're going to see monstrous growth and a lot of adoption. Maybe different ideals come into the space.

I don't know, it's just so interesting. But I think that's the biggest challenge right now is a lot of what we're talking about, but also the onboarding just getting people in to experience this and make some of it and then.

Think about it from a guild perspective. I got on a call with a VC the other day and they were asking me about where play to earn and guilds are and like investing and like he pretty much was asking me for investment advice on another like I think guild that's coming out and raising around and I pretty much told him, I said if you put all of the major guilds side by side, which one is defensible against the other currently I was like, you can't name one that can't do something that the other guilds can't do. They all do the same thing. And I was like, if that's the case and these ecosystems are all reliant on the games, I can't sit here and tell you to invest in any of the guilds that you just showed me. I was like, would you surprise. Probably do. Is just keep your Money for your Web3 ecosystem and wait until there's like a platform based technology that makes a lot of sense that scales some level of a guild infrastructure right now. Because there isn't one currently. But you see tons of guilds that are raising money and I'm like, dude, I don't think guilds are the play right now. And this is coming from someone who raised money with a guild. And I think that the play is force guilds to actually create things that contribute to web3 that aren't value extraction mechanisms. When you, when you find that you find the guild that's going to be potentially a decacorn. And you know in the startup world it's like a 10, a 10 billion dollar company. But that hasn't happened yet. And right now everyone's so caught up in this simple play to earn ideology that no one is thinking, oh, what happens when this doesn't work until now when we realize it really doesn't work. And it's funny because dude, when I tell this stuff and I tweet it out like of course you know you're going to get less engagement because people think you're funny. I'm trying to help people realize that this ecosystem is going down unless we do things to fix it. But it's cool that you guys kind of are open minded and understanding that we all need to make changes if we want to see, you know, Web3 gaming become incredibly operable.

Oh man. I mean when we, I mean we came from, you know, business, still in business stuff, but marketing and you know, like kind of traditional type business and Web2 primarily. And then we saw Web3, we're like, wow, there's so much opportunity here in the mechanisms. Just what you can do, it just opens up and you could, it's like idea city, you know, let's go crazy but also collaborate and figure out something sustainable. And everyone said think long term. Like we're in the early 90s right now, so don't rush to figure something out and like rush to cash, whatever.

Yeah, play to earn. Games are like AOL, Prodigy, CompuServe. That's where we're at right now. It's like, you know, we haven't, you know, they haven't gotten to like the mainstream big adoption yet. So I mean, we're very, very, very bullish, very big proponents of blockchain based gaming. But I mean, we're with you. We think that there's quite a bit of optimization to go still. You know, in my opinion, I feel like blockchain gaming only becomes mainstream when it doesn't feel like blockchain gaming. When somebody doesn't need to connect a MetaMask wallet, when somebody doesn't need to onboard through Coinbase and then transfer to Solana, you know, get it into a wallet and then sink it and then pay the gas fees to get the, you know, when it's just, okay, I installed this game, I created an account, they create the blockchain stuff in the back end for me and then I'm just going, I feel like that's what it needs to get mainstream. And we're still pretty far from that. And right now, you know, people like us, people like you guys, we're, we're building the plumbing, right? We're, we're, we're figuring out, we're working out all the kinks so that when it is ready to go mainstream, we've figured all this stuff out. That's kind of where my head's at with the gaming space right now.

Totally. And I'd like to get you guys thoughts on like on ramp capabilities. Like for example, if there was a game where you could, you know, spend 20 bucks to get an NFT. But you didn't need to do any of that wallet stuff. And there was like on ramp capabilities to pretty much say, hey, put in your credit card, we'll convert this into E so you can buy the NFT for you. So your 20 bucks is just coming out of your account regularly. I think that's something that would bring more people into this ecosystem but would love to get you guys thoughts.

Yeah, I mean there's a lot of what I think even Coinbase and some of these other platforms that are more crypto coin based. I mean there are debit using a card and we'll convert it into that so you don't have to do the whole wallet setup. I know there's like some, I don't know if that's active yet, but that's coming. You know, I think, I think getting it into credit card to some conversion mechanism, a platform that just makes that super simple. I don't know if that's Metamask or.

If you look at like Rally, Rally Token, which is like a creator, creator token. They have that, their own built in onboarding. We bought some Rally tokens because we had a, we had a friend who was launching a coin and you just go straight to Rally. You say you want to order some coins. It asks you how much you put in your credit card details right there. They give you the coins and then you could cash them out and transfer them into Coinbase if you want. Because Rally's on Coinbase and some of these other platforms. So I mean I don't see it as too far off. The technology already exists in other platforms. We just haven't really seen it in gaming yet.

Yeah, I agree with you. And what is one type of game that you wish you would see in the Metaverse that hasn't come out yet? I'm tired of seeing card games and yeah, RNG games. Like what are you guys thoughts?

Well, yeah, it's interesting with the card game thing because I know that's very Southeast Asia. Like they're into card games. I know that's why Axie really took off and I learned that recently. I was like, oh yeah, now it makes sense and it doesn't work in a lot of other parts of the world. So for me I love first person shooters. That was where I always got hooked in, you know like Counter Strike and Grand Theft Auto. I'm like those types of games I would play all day long.

I've always been a big RTS guy. You know Starcraft And Warcraft and Command and Conquer and that kind of stuff. I would love to see a real good RTS game come out.

Also.

Diablo II was one of my favorite games of all time. We're investors in Synergy Land. Synergy Land to me has some real Diablo 2 vibes. So I'm excited about that one. But yeah, I mean that's kind of where I'm at. I love the rtss. He loves the first person shooters. That's.

That's what we want to see driving around big world. Yeah.

Yeah.

I feel like that lends itself to play and earn as well. There's so many elements that you can. I like economies built into things too, so sandbox. I just love the concept of how someone can kind of build something there of their own thing. But it's involved in this bigger community and I think just thinking like that, like that's how we can start building up on top of this cool technology. Everybody's all hot about it. So let's get some of the brightest minds and see how it all kind of connects and how we can do our own thing within a greater space.

Yeah, but I think you do bring up a point that we've been sort of noticing like these patterns of like everybody seems to kind of be duplicating Axie. Right. Like the. I feel like the big hot game at the moment is Cyball and we do actually have some, some Cyball scholars that are playing with, with our characters and stuff right now. But Cyball to me feels very similar to Axie. And then you got Rebel Bots which is coming out, which we've, we've met the team at rebelbots. We really like the guys. But it's feels very similar to Axie. It seems like there's a lot of just kind of duplication going on and I feel like a lot of these gaming companies started to build these games when they thought Axie was the model. And now these games are finally coming out and we're realizing, okay, the way Axie built it, we're starting to realize is maybe not the best way to run the token ecosystem there.

I mean, I agree. I'm a big FPS fan. I've been playing this game called Mini Royale. Not shilling them, they don't pay me. But it's a really fun game and fits the play and earn ethos. But yeah, like all of these, these games that are like somewhat replica like replicable of Axie. I've been keeping my guild far away because another loop that you can go down as like as a guild is, you realize that if there's earning potential, a scholar is willing to leave any guild to join any other guild if the earnings there. So it's like you could fall in this loop where you're playing catch up every single game because a guild gets in before you and they and your scholars see that their scholar, their guild, scholars are doing the same thing. Like we saw it with Axie, Peg, Axi and Cyball. And I'm sure another game will come out and immediately people say, oh, are you getting scholars in this game? And the first thing I tell them is like, nah, we're, we're, we're taking our time, we're sourcing everything. Because I think for like long term sustainability, I just don't want the guys who come in after me to be exit liquidity for me. I want to be able to add value to what they're doing. Because if someone's first Web3 experience is a bad one, they are 10 times less likely to give it another go. Especially if you add on the fact that they could potentially lose thousands of dollars. So I try my very best to like think about the guy who's coming in two to three months from now that might be buying these assets and think how do we make the experience just as good for him as it was for me when I jumped in Defensibility.

It sounds like you're talking about with guild like because we're seeing the same thing. But also I'm curious of how you're approaching the onboarding of new gamers. Because I feel like the more games that we chat with, because we're focused on the media and content side primarily as our group. And that's the common thing is we want more active gamers, but it's not from the same pool of gamers. It's like maybe it's NFT buyers and they're kind of like, okay, I want to add some more utility or play with these NFTs. I either bought or I kind of know how to work my way around web 3. And then you have obviously traditional gamers that maybe can be converted over. Is there an approach that you take maybe with your content, just anything that you're putting out there to kind of attract more into the space.

Yeah. So I've been trying to, you know, shift my content to be less about just updates in games and to be more educational about the space. So a wide variety of games. And this transition for me happened back in like November, December. You know, I'm working on a deal and recently signed a deal with like Gary Vee and their VaynerSports team. So they represent me from a marketing and media standpoint and we're working, working on really cool integrations and the idea is to like make me the face of Web3 gaming. And for that to happen it couldn't just be focus on your own, you know, Axie Infinity. It was like, how do we focus on the transition into having you playing multiple games and interacting with these ecosystems, collaborations, partnerships. And I really saw a big jump in that shift in terms of people being more interested in me as the NFT gamer, not the Axie guy. In January when I started one hosting Twitter spaces and to just speaking openly about the biggest problems with this ecosystem as a whole and not just focusing solely on oh, when's the next Axie update? Like to be honest, like there are so many games coming out. Putting myself in a bubble instead of betting on the entire NFT gaming space is career suicide at this point. I think for any creator. And it's a, it's a fine line to balance because you need to be the person that's not shilling games but is also providing enough entertainment value to, you know, be able to sustain an audience. So it's a fine one to ride. But the biggest thing I've seen is just providing more educational content on web3 as a whole and also focusing on the news that's coming out. Like for example, Bored Ape Yacht Club doing their land sale and eventually launching a game. Like that's very much at the forefront of my mind in terms of how do I position myself to provide people information on that in a non biased way. And you know, I own a mutant Ape, so it's not, it can only be so non biased. But ultimately I think just focusing on the space as a whole and less on individual games is how you dominate the space in your, in your direct genre. And that's what you know, I put my time and energy to and for the most part it's been great. Like people see what I've been doing, they love my transparency. And it's funny because every time I'm like fighting guilds or just, I don't even consider it funny, I consider just being honest about guilds. People are like, oh crap, this guy owns a venture funded guild. If he's saying this, he's probably not trying to like lie about it because he's in a sense fighting his own bags. Imagine being the guy with play to earn assets in games and also saying, yeah, these games don't fucking work. I don't know if you can.

You're good.

I didn't mean to do that.

Be you, man. I love it. I love your chance.

So it's fun.

Yeah. Well, I think that's what. That's what comes out. I see it on Twitter, you know, and obviously all your videos and stuff. And it's transparency. And I think, yeah, if you go wide especially, it helps, you know, you have. You have some momentum already. But going wide, there's just so many people interested in this space. And like, we talked about 3 billion gamers. I mean, like, let's be honest, there's a market there, you know, so if you go wide and then you're leveraging someone like Gary Vee with his marketing capability, I mean, he's obviously a smart dude, so he sees something in you too, man. How about when it comes to content, like, what's. Cause what are the channels you're primarily on? Because we have kind of a lot of creators listening to us too, and marketers. So I know you got your start mainly on Twitch, and you're all over YouTube and Twitter, anything else, or those kind of the primaries.

So definitely. I think Twitter is. My. Twitter is the hub of everything. So anytime I'm doing content somewhere else, it starts on Twitter in terms of that's where I'm building it out. And Twitter I use, it's like the command center because you can send people to your other platforms. And that's where most Web3 conversations happen through Twitter. And then I'm also a firm believer that the people doing Twitter spaces now will be able to hit, like, future algorithms and get promoted through the Twitter ecosystem. So very bullish on Twitter. Twitch is probably my second biggest in terms of I spend, you know, four streams a week on Twitch, but Twitter and Twitch are my main focus. I've recently started dabbling in Instagram and TikTok. It takes a lot more to build over there because you got to, like, have your content in a much more kind of presentable way. But I think my favorite three are Twitter, Twitch, and YouTube. I think that YouTube has a lot of value as well, but it's just. You got to just stay consistent, like, regardless of platform. It's more so about the consistency, but I definitely think web3conversations live on Twitter more than anywhere else.

I'm curious how you got your initial traction. So you started on Twitch, right? And obviously you were kind of one of the first people playing some of the play to earn games on Twitch. How did you initially get some attention over to your Twitch stream.

I realized very early on that there weren't any scholars leveraging any of these platforms. Like, most of them were just basically on Facebook. And the next thing of that was realizing that scholars actually have value. Most people didn't realize they had value. So I was one of the first people that focused on how do you create educational content that helps them along their Web3 journey to turn them from just scholars into actual Web3 contributors and participants. So my early days were just honestly me finding loopholes in the system. Like, I realized if you go into the Axie Infinity scholarship channel for months, all people used to do was post links to their actual, like, you know, resume so they can get scholarships. So I was like, I created the system called Watch to Earn to help people to help one me vet scholars because I got tired of looking at Google documents that were like, you know, scholar forms for applications. And I realized that you could use proof of time as a way to see who actually is involved and dedicated to your community. So we started using Twitch as a way to vet scholars and we would give them channel points, and if they had a certain amount of channel points, you could redeem them for actual scholarships. And initially it worked out incredibly well. And like, the big caveats that come with it were like, you know, my, I grew incredibly fast, faster than I thought I would ever grow. But people in the community started using it as a way to just spam viewership and wouldn't actually give out the scholarships. And there was like a lot of issues that came and stemmed from it because people weren't actually like leveraging it for pure intentions. So what ended up happening was it was like, it was a very good early growth mechanism. But the community, like, you know, anybody, anytime you're building traction, people are going to want to follow the kind of the void that you've said or follow their path. And it got to the point where they pretty much like exhausted it. So I ended up breaking away from that. But at that point, you know, I already knew I wanted to make a transition and leveraging this whole educational side or aspect. So it's been easy for me to transition into a space where not only do I have like a good scholar number of people that follow me, but also people who are non scholars, who are Web3 participants from places like Europe and the United States that follow my content and understand what I'm doing. So I've been able to like, build a pretty solid balance and keep people very much engaged in the ecosystem for like, the content. I do provide. But I think that it's not a simple thing to kind of do because transitioning your brand multiple times is very difficult. But I think if you focus on how you are going about things in a transparent, open, and honest way, you'll always run into people who want to be a part of what you're building. And that's pretty much how I've done it. I don't really have any, like, crazy, like, strategy that I, like, go down the list on. I just kind of wake up and when something seems fun, like, I do it. Like, for example, I did like a stream, and World Wide Web 3 guy came into my chat, was like, yo, jump into the game. And we ended up, like, hosting like a. Like a spontaneous rap freestyle concert in worldwide Web three. And then.

Yeah.

And that resulted in a day like, they want to do more YouTube content with me and my brand. And I'm like, dude, you just never know how opportunities come about. It's just you handling things in a genuine way and the right people kind of like, you know, follow suit. So it was a thing where it's been, like, a really interesting transition. But I think ultimately the people who are in Web3 for the right reasons, they find ways to cultivate and build cool and innovative audiences, regardless of, like, where they started. Like, later on, I want to dive deeper into, you know, the art scene and eventually start getting into the cultivation of art and collecting and eventually hosting my own art shows. And I know, like, one day I'll figure out how that integration will happen, but until then, you know, I'm just building and finding ways to put the puzzle pieces in the right space.

Yeah.

Yeah.

One thing that I really love about Web3, and, you know, Joe and I, we've. We've been doing web3 stuff since 2017ish. Blockchain gaming only since last year. But one thing that I really love about this space is it doesn't feel like anybody's untouchable.

Right.

Like, you find a game that you like, there's a good chance you could get that the person who developed the game on a call, talk to them, learn about the game, learn about where the game is going and get all the details. And then next thing you know, you know, if it's a good game that you want to buy the NFTs for or buy some of the tokens at the token sale or whatever. And. And I really, really love that because you mentioned the thing about the guy from World Wide Web where he just jumped on the Twitter spaces and you Got or was it a twitch stream or a Twitter space? I think it was a twitch stream, right?

Oh it was, yeah, it was just a twitch space. Yeah, that's, I mean twitch stream. Excuse me.

Twitch. Yeah, no, that's. I think that's one of my favorite things about Web3 is that like everybody feels so community based and you know we come from like a digital marketing, like affiliate marketing background where it's a very competitive thing, it's a very, very ego driven. And where we are now, everybody seems like, you know, the going terb is wag me, right Everybody, all ships rise together.

Right?

So I think that's what I really, really love about this space the most is everybody feels like they're trying to help. I mean there's a lot of bad actors still, don't get me wrong. But it feels like the people that are legitimate are all trying to help each other out a lot.

No, I totally agree.

And if we're going to turn this thing around the play to earn, you know, we're going to figure out a good way here.

Hey, I'm giving games like another year, year and a half and then what's going to happen is I'm going to eventually launch a gaming studio with loot. So if they don't get it right between now and then I'll eventually, I'll, I'll eventually come up with a game and an ecosystem because I think like, like you said, it's so early, it's hard to believe that, that it won't happen. I want to get you guys thoughts. Did you see where Dr. Disrespect started his own NFT AAA gaming studio?

No, I didn't see that.

No.

But he's got the audience, right? And he's got all the connections.

He has all the connections, all the audience and I'm like, you guys, you guys are running out of time. You early, like early guys, early to the party. Your time is running short. You have Dr. Disrespect the board Ape Yacht Club is going to drop a game. I don't know if the game will be great or not, but they have the audience to do whatever the hell they want at this point. So it's like the early movers in NFT gaming, their time is running short in my opinion.

How long before Gary Vee drops starts building a game studio? I wouldn't, I wouldn't see that on the radar.

Well, look where the V friends are going, man. It started from his little sketch but like he's already saying man, there's a whole roadmap there with each of those and turning into a game. I think he even mentioned there's a game in there somewhere. But we'll see. We'll be watching your Twitter. Maybe you'll.

I wouldn't say that's outside the realm of possibility. I could totally see Gary going that direction for sure.

Yeah. I think a gaming studio would be sick.

Oh, yeah, I was just gonna say, like, it's interesting because you're like, yeah, there is time running out in a lot of instances because, like, you could see there's gaps. You're talking about it like just on Twitch, you found a gap in the market. Here's a whole big platform and Twitch and tons of gamers and no one was with streaming play to earn stuff during at least the time that you were looking for it. And that's gonna spread everywhere. There's still opportunities everywhere, but the gaps are closing for sure. What are some of the biggest opportunities for people new in this space that maybe not the gamers, but folks that wanna build some of the plumbing and content or whatever, maybe some of the tech? What kind of gaps are you looking at right now that are pretty wide open or valuable at least?

So from a media perspective.

Yeah, media.

I think there's a lack of really good media coverage.

Oh, yeah.

I'd love to see someone to create a decentralized, like a decentralized media firm that just focuses on putting out the facts. No shilling, just putting out the facts and getting it out there. I know there's like Decrypt, which does pretty well, but there is a big gap in overall media coverage in Web3, and I think someone will eventually get that right. I see the guys over at Farouk over at Rug Radio does a pretty good job in the. In the podcasting front, but I think there's going to be someone who comes in who can even do it a little bit better and make it a little bit more inclusive. I think, like, another step is just overall technology and community building and how people leverage Discord. If you think about where discord is, there's 140 million monthly active users, and for the most part, most people aren't getting the most out of their Discord audiences in Discord. So I think those who build, you know, platforms or products or create ecosystems on Discord, I think there's a lot of, you know, potential revenue. There's. I also think, like, for anybody looking to grow in web 3, you should be focused on how you can learn the most about Discord and Just become someone's Discord community manager. I've seen so many instances where Discord community managers or Twitter space co hosts. Like if you look at, oh, shiny shows, I mean, I watch Herb grow from like a very small follower account to like, I think almost 20 or 30k now. Just hosting with Oceany and being a part of that ecosystem and then also, you know, getting, I think get paid pretty well. So it's like there's so many ways that you can contribute. You just gotta find those little pockets. I think Discord's one of them. I think Twitter space is one of them. I think overall content and continuing to double down on just one area and becoming like, you know, a key figure. Dude, I had no clue what any of this wallet crypto defi stuff was. This time last year you couldn't, I couldn't name any of that stuff. And it's like now people look at me as if I'm like the. One of the leading figures in the gaming space and I'm like, you are? Yeah, you can change your life in a couple months and, and it's not, it doesn't take long. It's just how do you double down and figure out the audience that you provide value to? And it doesn't have to be an insane big audience. I've seen people with just a couple thousand followers really build out their own spaces in Web3 and monetize and be able to make a sustainable living just off of their following and their transparency and building out their own platforms that they think are incredibly innovative.

There's so much opportunity and you called it, man. There's so much value as long as you're given value. There's so many people out there willing to collaborate with you, open up the doors, at least do a test run and yeah, hit them up in the DMs on Twitter, man, you'd be surprised. You get a lot of responses and you never know. Just give a little bit.

Yeah, I feel like with hard fork gaming, that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to do the media thing where we're. That, you know, we're trying to build this sort of transparent media source where people could come to us and learn about games and they don't feel like there's any bullshit. It's kind of like you get what you get and you can make your decisions based on what we're talking about. Because I do feel like there is a little bit of. When you get on YouTube and you start hunting down games like If I go do a search for Pagaxi right now, it feels like every single video about Pickaxi is an investor in Pagaxi trying to pump their bags, right?

Oh, it's got 100 eggs.

Yeah. So, like, you know, that. That's kind of the industry right now, and I feel like that kind of needs to be cleaned up a little bit. There needs to be a little bit more honesty, a little bit more transparency from a lot of the people creating content, because a lot of the content is very motivated by what the creator is going to get out of it, as opposed to truth, you know?

Yeah, no, I mean, I totally agree. I tell games every time they reach out about it, I'm like, dude, you can't pay me to make a YouTube video, like, for you. Like, that's not something I like. I do. I won't take payments for YouTube videos. I was like, if you want to, you know, talk about how we can help you with, like, the tech that we're building and things like that and how that can help you scale community, like, that's a conversation I'll take. But I like not having a platform where people are paying me to do things, because then you stay away from the whole, oh, is this person shilling? And it's so early. It's like, all it takes is one bad project and you've ruined your reputation in a space that is less than, like, two, three years old. So for me, it's like, I want to just keep myself as open and honest and transparent, even all the way down to when, you know, I sell certain assets or do things. I try to stay very open and honest with it.

Yeah, Yeah.

I tuned into a Twitter space that you were on a couple of weeks ago, and, like, that's how I knew you were the real deal was because you were in that Twitter space talking about all the problems with guilds and people are in this Twitter space going, yeah, Bryson, don't you run a guild? Like, why are you, you know, so that's how, you know, that's how I knew. All right, this dude's legit. This guy's out to help the greater good of the Web3 gaming community. So, yeah, I mean, appreciate that about you, for sure.

No, much love. Appreciate it.

Yeah, man. Well, I know at the end of your videos, and I don't know if we have any other rabbit holes you want to go down here.

I mean, there's one question we like to ask everybody we bring on the show lately, and that's. You already mentioned Mini Royale. Are there any other games that excite you that are kind of like in the works, that maybe aren't out yet, that are on your radar?

Yeah.

So Mini Royale 1, you know, I play the game, I have personal assets in it. Crypto Unicorns, I think is going to be incredible. My guild owns assets in Crypto Unicorns, so we're probably going to be farming some of. Some of it out. But it reminds me of like, a combination of like farmville. And I think that there's a lot of an incredible crossover appeal because the branding are these cute, cuddly little unicorns. So, like, I think about the games that are going to Potentially bring in Web2base folks, and I think that's one of them. Those are probably the top two games on my list right now. And then I've been playing, you know, recently the World Wide Web 3 ecosystem. And I don't even know how much of a game it truly is, but it's Loki, just a fun metaverse to be a part of. So those are probably three that are like, high on my list right now. Anything outside of that, I'm just kind of on the fray. Like, my team really likes this game called Big Town Chef. So we've been chatting with them, but we haven't made any purchases or anything. But there are some really cool and interesting ecosystems systems and, you know, shout out to the play Blancos guys. I don't think they get enough love because they don't have a token out there. But dude, I played their game and it was a really, really fun game. Reminded me of like fall guys, and it was a pretty cool ecosystem to just get started. You don't really need a wallet or anything. So I think there are some good things going out there. And all of those are games that I can credibly stand behind and say, I trust that I'm putting my. My reputation on the line and there's going to be something decent that comes from them.

World Wide Web 3 was fun. I mean, we played it when they were doing the sort of White List giveaway on it, and that thing was. That was a blast. It's just like nostalgia, right? It's like every. It feels like you're playing like an old NES game, but then there's like Rick and Morty references and Matrix references and it's.

Yeah, we love that game. And also what meta ops we just saw recently. So first person shooter, that might be one to peek at for yourself. Yeah, it's got some cool graphics, man. So I was like, oh, first person shooter. I'm in. So I've yet to play it, though. But we just got the NFTs.

You got me for that. I'm definitely going to have to give it a look. You know, I'm a big FPS guy.

Yeah, bro. Well, hey, man, what's. What's that last line you always say? Was it be the impossible?

Oh, yeah. Become the impossible. It used to be chase the impossible. And then I realized that you never stop chasing if you're chasing something. So I think that as we grow, we become closer to whatever our perfect or most perfect self is like every day, even if we never reach it. So that's why I use the term become the impossible, because you never reach your first optimal nature, but you could probably get incredibly close.

I love it, man. Well, cool. Well, dude, it's a pleasure to have you on here, and I can't wait to see what the next year is going to look like, and maybe we'll do a round two or something. Do like, where's Bryson at these days? You know, and where's the state?

So where should people go? Learn more about you. You know, if you want to shout out your YouTube channel and anywhere people should go. Learn more about Bryson.

You can learn more about me on Twitter. It's just Twitter.com Bryson. But before you check me out, make sure that you check out the Hustle and Flow podcast. Hustle and Flowchart, actually, because you guys are doing dope, dope shit, and I appreciate you bringing me on. So don't check me out. Check out Hustle and Flowchart. And if you're new, make sure you. You watch all of the podcasts all the way through. Yes, I'm shilling.

I mean, appreciate it. Check out Bryson, too. We'll link you all up. Everyone can find you, man. It's been a pleasure. We'll do it again. And keep doing your thing, man. I can't see where it goes.

Totally, man. Thanks, guys.

Awesome.

I hope you enjoyed that conversation with.

Bryce, and I know we did, and we learned a ton about the space. I hope you learned a ton more about this space and kind of got.

A feel for some of the pros and cons of the current play to earn space. There's a lot going on and a lot to understand, but once you understand.

It, it gets really, really exciting. So we're really, really going deep down.

This rabbit hole, and there's going to be a lot more episodes about play to earn gaming. So stay tuned to future episodes to get much more where that came from from. Also, one final reminder. Check out Attention Tips. Joe and I are putting together a little mini course. It's a 10 day course where over 10 days you're going to learn different strategies to grow more awareness and attention to whatever you're doing. Whether you're trying to grow a personal brand, a business, a cause, anything like that. We're going to show you how to drive attention to it. We're doing a lot of it in the gaming space now, helping drive attention to various games and we've done it over the years in various other spaces. We thought we'd put together a comprehensive course of some of our favorite tactics to grow attention. Most of them are sort of growth hacky, outside the box kind of tactics and we're compiling it all in one place. You can get access to that 100% for free over at Attention Tips. All right, so go check that out and thanks once again for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, we'd love it. If you share it around, we appreciate you. See you in the next one.

Sa.

It.