How We're Building In Public

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. Wiki wiki, wiki wiki.

I can still do that.

Wiki wiki Wiki.

We recorded that like three years ago, but we're recording this right now live.

I can hear the.

Kidness in your voice.

The kidness. The youth in your voice.

That's the word I'm looking for. I could hear the youth in your voice.

Yes, sir. Yes, sir. That was me beatboxing years for the intro. I'm. We're actually doing this live. Recording this live. But obviously this is on. On the podcast and whatnot. But yeah, Hustle and Flowchart, dude. We've been. The kidness in my voice. We've been doing this a long time and we've been changing some stuff and this episode's gonna be a cool BTS kind of behind the scenes. Not the boy bands. We're not the boy band guys. But you know, maybe we should play some BTS singles or something on here soon, Matt. But we'll be playing some tracks, but you know. Yeah, we're trying some new stuff out with the podcast. You're gonna get a lot of behind the scenes of what we're doing at Hard Fork Gaming, the business that we're putting all of our efforts into these days. And things are very interesting, lots to chat about there. We're also having on this episode, instead of a live guest, we actually have an edited, kind of concise version of a guest that says some really smart stuff. We're having Ronan the Collector on the episode shortly. Some somehow we actually have a show flow. We're actually organized for this. So this is like a Hustle and Flowchart too. So I'm excited for this one. A lot of behind the scenes stuff throughout the whole thing. Shout outs to projects and alpha and news. But speaking of that, let's shout out some partners that kind of keep that have supported us since day one, honestly. So on this podcast we haven't always shouted out a ton of people lately that we're working about with on the web three side of things. But Animoca Brands has been just a badass company in partnership kind of arrangement with them. We've been chatting about a lot of their games that they put out. They invest in hundreds and hundreds of projects in the whole blockchain space, metaverse space. And they have a cool vision too. Like they have this big vision with Yatsu and their team. So Definitely peek at what they're doing on the gaming side too, not just like on the investing side. And games like Rev Racing we've talked about. There's life beyond Bingi bananas, all the MotoGP. There's like a whole, this whole like racing stuff happening in the Rev side of stuff. So definitely check out what they're doing. And they have new things coming out all the time. So you'll hear us chat about that often for good reason because we learn a lot through them too and they're doing a lot of cool stuff. And then we have blockchain space with, with Peter Ng. He's been on the podcast, many of you have heard him. And he's leading the way on the data side and aggregating all this, all this crazy tech stuff and like kind of bringing it in house and helping projects like games and guilds who basically gather a bunch of scholars and gamers together. And all this stuff is moving at light speed. Even the structure of all the stuff like guilds that we've talked about. But the data is always important and blockchain space is right in the middle of it. And we have these blockchain space conversations we publish every week and we're just getting going. But these are chats with founders and builders chatting about metaverse stuff and like kind of the inside scoop, more behind the scenes of projects and kind of trends and stuff they should know about. So we're doing a lot with them too. We're actually. That's like a co branded content thing, so it's been kind of fun.

Yes sir.

We're doing these weekly blockchain space interviews and actually the clip we're going to roll later from Ronan is a piece of one of the blockchain space blockchain conversations that we're doing. So really great company, really excited to be working with them. And then also make sure that you're on our hard Fork white list Alpha Club. Make sure you're in the Hard Fork Alpha club. We're actually shying away from the White list and calling it the Alpha Club. Right?

It's a rebrand, y'. All.

It's a rebrand. It's the Alpha club, not the White list. So make sure you're on the Hard Fork Alpha Club. Go to Hardfork GG Alpha. If you go to Hardfork GG Alpha, you are in the club. We hook you up with free NFTs. You're eligible for our contest. When we give away stuff, we're actually building out some tools for gamers and for investors in the gaming space, you're going to get access to all of that by being an Alpha Club member. So make sure you are in the Alpha Club. That's also the community where we're chatting right now, live inside of the Discord. There's conversation going on right now in the stage chat. So if you want to, you know, interact with us over at Hard Fork, make sure you're part of that whitelist.

This is. See, this is where it's going to get fun with this podcast, is it's going to cater to the audience on the podcast who's listening it at their leisure. Leisure as you will. Or maybe if you're hanging around on Tuesdays and this is like, I don't know if we'll always stick to this, But Tuesdays at 11am Pacific is when we fired this thing up. And you can totally join us if you go to. Well, Twitter Spaces is where we're on right now. Can't always guarantee we'll be there, but it seems to be working. There's folks on there, chat and stuff. And then also on Discord, like you said at Hardfork, GG Alpha will get you in the door, fill out some details because we're giving away cool swag, Digital swag. Should we call NFTs like digital swag? I guess, sure, why not? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we give away all sorts of stuff.

You can call it whatever you want. We're making this industry. This industry is being built as we speak. We're part of the building of it.

See, that's what's kind of fun about this, right? It gives us every excuse to just, I don't know, let's.

We get to name this shit. If we're part of building it, we get to name it.

Right? Right. But yeah, so shout out to the partners all the logistics and things that we've been doing. These episodes, a lot of BTs, a lot of behind the scenes, like we were saying, of like building Hard Fork gaming. There's always so much going on and just this podcast alone is like an example, an experiment in real time where we're going to kind of break down what we're doing here. So just kind of give you kind of a look at what we're doing. It's a lot of content creation. And actually just yesterday, a couple days ago, we started bringing on another person on the team, another editor. So shout out to Turney, who is starting to help us out on multiple fronts, editing content, because that's. Yeah, it's super valuable right now. We've had a bunch of people we've chatted with and they're saying, you know, if you're in Web3 or blockchain and you're a content creator, now's the time to really double down on your content, make relationships and establish yourself and your brand as someone, you know, trustworthy with not only an audience that's super valuable, but of the projects and the builders and founders right now. And I feel like right now that's. That's like it's glued in our minds. Matt contents, everything. It's always been for us.

And, you know, speaking of, of that, you know, if you want to get deeper involved in the Web3 space, specifically the Web3 gaming space, you know, we're always looking for people to come join us here at Hard Fork and, you know, go down the rabbit hole with us and build something bigger. You know, we recently brought in Jake from Steak Farm, who's running the community management and helping with Twitter and taking on a bigger and bigger role, and he's just an absolute badass. I don't have the. You're simply the best. That Buffalo always plays every time he mentions his name. But, you know, he knows, he knows. So we brought him on. You know, Crypto kinder is out there hunting down Alpha for us. Asmodai Rostov all these guys are our alpha scouts that are hunting down all of the stuff that we're sharing on our LFG lives each week. We've now got Turney, who's helping with the video edits. You know, last week we did this live hustle and flowchart, and I had it. I had the recording on the feed for podcast listeners that same day. We're going to try to keep that same standard. They're going to start coming out on Wednesdays. We're going to do live Tuesdays. The recording will come out on Wednesdays. So we're going to. We're going to start popping them out a day later on recording. But that's going to be turning. Who's helping turn those around. See what I did there?

I like what she did.

Turning them around for us.

We're going to turn it up, y'. All.

I'm sure she's going to love all these puns with her name.

She led us to them. So, yeah, man, it's exciting when we, when we, when we get a bunch of people who see the vision and see where we're headed, and I see them just watching the chats right now and Discord blowing Up the stage, chat. There's just all these gifs being. Being laid down. And dude, yeah, everybody, it's. The vision's strong, the team is strong and growing strong. And back to content. Like, the content's the glue for so much. So a big part of our vision with Hard Fork and, well, mainly Hustle and Flowchart, when we pivoted before Hard Fork was even a thing, was to be the bridge for folks who are interested in Web3. And I think every episode, I'm always going to bring it up, at least, because that's the. The mission behind what we're doing here, at least on this show, is to be kind of that. That bridge over. And I feel like content's always been the thing to at least educate, entertain. Those are the two things, and, you know, build some trust here in a space that's kind of. Kind of wacky and moves super fast.

Yeah. So we're building in public, right? Like, that's. That's literally what we're doing right now. I made a tweet about this yesterday, and then again when we were leading up to this one, this episode that we're doing here is we're finding that the best way for us to build Hard Fork gaming is just to experiment in public. Right. Like, we're figuring out how to live stream on Twitter. If you got on early today, you saw that we were still figuring out audio issues until about five minutes after we were supposed to go live, you know, so we're actually figuring this all out in public. This is what we're doing here. We've been doing for five years. We've been recording Hustle and Flowchart podcasts. They were twice a week for almost. For four years. And just the last, you know, six months or so, we've narrowed it down to once a week because we're also doing our LFG lives now. So we've been doing this for almost five years now, at least once a week. And we figured, let's just do what we've been doing, but let people tune in live. So that's all we're doing. We're literally taking what we've been doing for five years and saying, let's just do it live in front of an audience. Let's just let people listen in as we actually build. So if you want to be here building with us and be a part of the conversation, you can. But if you also want to listen to what we're building and, you know, see what we've talked about and, you know, not actually engage with it live. You can listen on the recordings just like you always have. And so we really, really kind of adopted that philosophy for all of Hard Fork gaming. If you watch our LFG lives, each one, we feel like we've improved upon the past one. The production quality has gotten a little bit better, the skits have gotten a little more polished, we've gotten a little bit more comfortable, you know, going live and talking. On came. Everything just gets a little bit more polished with every episode. And that's what we love about what we're doing here at Hard Fork is that we get to build live, we get to interact with the community in real time, and we get to hear their feedback. If we noticed on these live streams that the energy kind of faded in the chat during this section of it, we won't do that segment on the next LFG Live or our next Hustle and Flowchart show. Right? So it's been this really fun experiment that we've been doing lately of just, you know what, let's just show what we're building as we build it, and if we screw things up as we go, we'll learn the lessons, we'll teach the lessons, and we'll keep on moving on.

I think it's super valuable, dude, to everyone and, and even projects who might be listening, because our background is in marketing, digital marketing and content marketing and doing that for what, almost 15 years or whatever it is now. So if their projects listening that might be building the next awesome game or whatever, and they're looking for some marketing content suggestions, tag along, like join the podcast and go follow us. You know, if you're listening live, then go, go seek out Hustle and Flowchart on any podcast channel. Go subscribe. Leave us a comment. But, you know, like, we want to serve the projects out here as well. And the behind the scenes will ideally support Web3 in general. So not only are we bringing in other people, you know, from maybe Web two or wherever. Web one. Is that a thing? I don't know.

Web one, yeah.

Angel Fire, way back when, if people are still hanging out back there, we'll welcome them as well. They're not the earliest of adopters.

But helping the projects. I think it's just really fun to kind of share what we're doing here. So building in public is pretty fun and I think we're learning a lot. Let's talk about the Twitter space. I mean, I guess he kind of broke that down a little bit. Matt.

I'm just kind of yeah, well, I mean, right now. So we are also testing Twitter spaces. I thought, you know, we can. One thing that's been going through my mind, and this is just kind of like an off the cuff conversation that we didn't really talk about before going live, is this thing keeps on circulating through my mind of just be useful, right? Like when you put out content, be useful. When you tweet something, make sure it's useful. When you put out a video, make sure it's useful to somebody. Just be useful. Create useful content. Right. And so where I think we can really be useful on this Hustle and Flowchart show and sort of the new evolution that we're taking it, like, you know, internally, we talk about the Hustle and Flowchart. This isn't its final form. It's evolving. What we're doing today, the podcast is probably going to look totally different a year from now. We're evolving it. We're trying to find what that looks like. Right. And one thing that I think could be really, really useful to anybody who listens to Hustle and Flowchart, whether it be the. The people that came in back when we were really talking about digital marketing and Facebook ads and Google Ads and SEO and all that kind of stuff. And you really want to hear the marketing side, or if you're in the web3 and you want to get more into gaming and you want to dive deeper into web 3. The place I think we can be the most useful is literally explaining how we're doing stuff, literally showing what we're doing, how it's working, whether, you know, what. What the results were, and just like literally peeling back the curtains. Right. So saying all of that, circling back around to what you originally said with Twitter, I think where we can be useful is actually just break down how we're actually sharing this to discord to Twitter and recording it all at the same time.

I think that's fair, man. Because I'm looking at Twitter right now. We're live there. There's still folks we see. I'm seeing a lot of retweets and sharing happening. So things are working, it seems like. So we're testing multiple things right now. We have a little contest giveaway thing on on Twitter spaces. We're obviously streaming live through all sorts of mechanisms. Yeah. Breakdown, maybe, let's see, at a high level and then any details. Maybe I could poke at some details as kind of like, I don't know, because I'm not as deep in all that side of stuff. Yeah, yeah.

Joe, I mean, there's even more behind the scenes right there. Like Buff and I, we're. We're much more the tech team that are kind of building a lot of the streaming and recording and that kind of stuff. And Joe's much more of the outreach team who's connecting us with brands and. And that sort of the non tech.

People side, I guess.

Yeah, he's the people side where I feel like I'm like almost purely tech side. Joe's almost purely people side. And then Buff kind of is that Venn diagram in the center where he seems to do really well in both avenues.

Would I be in Biotech then? Is it people? I don't know. No, I don't know. Probably not. Continue on, Matt, with your tech talk.

So we are going to talk about actually like how we're building and how we're actually connecting with a lot of people. So during that part, I imagine you'll probably be much more chatty about how we're doing that kind of stuff, because that's a lot more your avenue. But what we're doing right now is we're actually recording the audio with a tool called vmix. So Joe and I are both inside of this tool, vmix, and we're hearing our audio from each other inside of vmix. That's what's recording our audio right now. And then we're also in Discord, but we're not hearing ourselves through Discord. We pulled the volume down in Discord, so we're only hearing each other in our recording software. And so our mics are feeding into Discord and they're feeding into our vmix, which is where we're recording. And then we have to hand the feed off essentially to Buffalo and Jake, who are then taking those recordings using a tool called bluestacks. This is getting into the weeds. I know they're using a tool called bluestacks, which is a little emulator that makes your PC allow it to run like Android apps. Right. So they have Twitter installed in bluestacks on their Android app on their desktops, and they're feeding the audio from Discord and into Twitter spaces. So if you followed along to that, congratulations, you just got a PhD and how we're. And how to stream audio to three different places at once.

Someone should model that in a diagram and just put, here's how to take a podcast to Twitter and Discord. And the part that we're still trying to figure out is what. How to bring someone from those channels onto this Stream.

Yeah, exactly. So in this episode, we're not going to be able to bring anybody up onto the stage and actually hear their audio. That's some tech we're still trying to work out. We got to, you know, we got to do some ninja and routing some audios and do some funky stuff in order to figure that out, which we will probably figure it out by the next episode. But right now we haven't figured out. So we actually can't pull anybody up on stage live with us and capture their audio yet with our current setup. But we do want to interact, and we are watching the stage chat. If anybody was to ask a question or anything. When we come around to the section where we, you know, want to do any sort of AMAs or questions and answers or anything like that, we are watching the stage chat. Most of the stage chat is just memes, which I absolutely love watching the memes as we're talking.

They're hilarious. They're. They're making me laugh.

So it's like keeping my finger on the pulse of how people are thinking of our content. It's like if we say something and then like a meme pops up, it's like, ooh, that's what they think of that.

Oh, this is awesome. So, like, be brutally honest. Like, if it's super, just. Just give us a bad, like, move on. All right, well, if we're talking about.

Something too long, just drop the poop emoji or something.

Isn't this kind of like this has been. The problem with podcasting, actually, is you never get feedback. You never get real time feedback. Yeah, and we always enjoy chatting on stages. And, like, we're in bands. You get feedback instantly. Someone hates your shit, then they're just walk away or whatever. So, yeah, this is. This is rad. You guys rock. All right, continuing. Well, actually, hold on. Is there anything else on that front?

I'm sure. I'm sure I can definitely get deeper into the weeds if you want. We're also using. So there is one really, really cool tool that I am absolutely in love with that now that I have it, I don't know how I ever lived without it. And that's my stream deck.

Oh, yes. You are decked out.

I'm doing a lot with the stream deck. So when you hear me, like, roll the intro live or roll the outro live or play music or do a little sound bite, like something like this.

It'S time to kick ass and chew bubble gum. And I'm all out of gum. Don't you ever cut them off?

Sorry, I forgot that there was more to that.

Let's fucking go San Diego. There we go, baby.

So I'm doing all that with my stream deck. Those are just like pre programmed buttons that I have on my stream deck to feed audio out. So that's the other little piece that adds a little bit of extra polish. And icing on the cake is that I can just like roll in little sound bites whenever I want, fade in and out music and you know, and that's a very similar way to what Buffalo is doing with his hard fork radio, but he just does it on another level. Like I can't tell you all the stuff he's doing in those live shows.

Buffalo, Buffalo has Lab is kind of joking about the amount of tech in front of Matt. It's like multiplied by 10. If you go to Buffalo's desk and the stream. I think he has three stream decks and they're like the biggest ones just surrounding everything and they're, they're magical. I don't know how he does it. So yeah, that's amazing. So any, I would say noodle on that. If anyone has tech questions, definitely reach out to Mr. Eflow. He is the tech man himself. He'll take you down the rabbit hole along with him. So. And answer any questions on that. Another thing a little behind the scenes I want to talk about. Maybe this is more on the people side and this is on the outreach side or just something we're noticing when we're. Because we're chatting with so many projects, we're always outreaching and trying to connect to new folks. There's a lot of alpha scouts watching us right now who are reaching out. They're trying to start conversations. I mean the cool thing in Web3 is that we all can reach out to these projects and give value somehow and start a dialogue, share of their stuff. Maybe you'll get rewarded with some things, get a whitelist spot or whatever, you know, get a, a role in their discord community. Something that I've been doing and, and we've been kind of experimenting with more is on this outreach. In our case, you know, we're a media network so. And a lot of the time that actually gets spent on editing this stuff and making it look good is finding really good graphics and videos and, and all this stuff that it's like eye candy. You know, we all want to see some cool stuff. That's why like, you know, we can try to make stuff in Canva. That's where we make a Lot of our graphics, like I post some stuff, you can actually animate all sorts of things. You can make websites with Canva, you can go crazy stuff there. But we're not talking about that right now. We're talking about the fact that getting all of this stuff is kind of like a lot of process to get gameplay footage of games and these new metaverse projects. So I've just been reaching out and offer and saying, hey, we want to feature, you know, do you have any assets, some media assets, maybe some trailers, gameplay footage that we could share? And more often than not, you know, you got a foot in the door strategy right there. It's a way to start a conversation. It's a way that even as a small time creator, as someone who's maybe writing content, maybe just posting on Twitter, doing threads in discords, connecting people, all that stuff's going to pay off if you have a little bit of media and you could like chop it up and do some stuff. But yeah, I am going to, I'll shut up and take your assets. But yeah, that's pretty much what they say is like, you know, everybody's willing to have a conversation if you're willing to help out. And this is like the perfect time to collaborate with anyone in the space. So I wanted to share that little tidbit. That's how we're kind of getting the foot in the door with these. Doesn't matter the size of the project. Everyone wants help and right now content is king. I want to keep harping on that. And everyone has the ability to create on any of these channels. So swipe that and tell us how it works. But Matt, what are you thinking? Because we were kind of riffing on this idea, we were refining it yesterday a little bit more. I've been doing it a while, but as cold outreach, I think it's a really smart strategy that anybody can just pick up and do.

Yeah, I mean, the approach of going to companies and starting with what can we do for you? Is really the trick. Going to companies and saying, hey, we saw that you have this new game coming out. We've got two live shows that we do, LFG Live, Hustle and Flowchart Live. Can we talk about your, your game? Do you have any video assets that we can use? Do you have any, you know, NFTs that we can give away to our audience? Is there some way we can use the platform that we're building to promote you? And when we approach companies like that, it's instant foot in the door right like, it's just. They're like, oh, these guys want to genuinely help us. Let's give them whatever they need. That's how we've managed to get NFTs from Awesome Games like Evo and Synerg Land and Life Beyond. And, you know, the. The list goes on and on of all the NFTs, mini Royale that we've given away on our shows. And it's just from taking that approach of just like, hey, we've got a live show. Can we roll your trailer? Is there anything that we can show people? And you know, that that's. That's been the trick. And I feel like a lot of that has come over from that. That previous digital marketing career that we had, right? Like, we've been doing Hustle and flowchart for over five years now, and we've been podcasting for over 10 years now. And that's. That's been the approach. The approach has been, hey, we've got this Hustle and Flowchart podcast. Every episode gets thousands of downloads. Do you want to come on and talk about your new book? Do you want to come on and talk about your new podcast? You want to come on and talk about your new software product that you just launched? That's literally what we've done for the last decade to grow our business. And we've literally just taken that same concept come over to Web3. And in Web3, for some reason, it seems like kind of a novel concept where everybody's take, take, take, take, take. How do I get coins? How do I get money out? I get free stuff out of you. But we come with the approach of, hey, you've got something cool, let us share it with your audience. And then the reciprocation comes after.

Yeah, man, reciprocation. You got that. But you know what? I kind of want to move on, Matt. I want to move on and share because we have a guest with us. We prepared him, he's standing by, waiting now.

He's background music and, yeah, he came.

With his own soundtrack and everything. How the hell did he. He's magical. Well, let's set it up a little bit. This is the collector he's been working with, or he worked with, Mr. Crypto Buffalo for quite some time over at Lads City. And he's still a co host over there and definitely on NFT Live. You gotta go check him out. And, Matt, so maybe, maybe we kick off this clip. I know you were the one that spent a lot of time editing down because we had a long conversation with Ronan. And this one's just like kind of a very concise clip of that long.

Yeah, yeah. So we did. We talked to him about where he sees the metaverse going, where he sees play to earn going.

And.

And we also talked about how branding is going to become more prolific and some of these big brands are entering the space. Really fascinating conversation. You'll be able to hear the full thing over on Blockchain conversations.

It will be this week. It. It will be. I got confirmation this week. But yeah, this. This technically is a blockchain space. Blockchain conversations video. But preview the audio with you here. Yeah.

So enjoy and we'll see you in a few minutes here. Yeah, I don't know. We'll be back with you in a few minutes. What's up?

I'm Ronan the Collector. I work for Gig Labs. I've been in the space for about two. A little over two years now.

So you have GIG Labs doing partnerships there. Tell us about background in the space the last couple of years.

So my introduction to the space was actually GPK on the wax blockchain. So that was my introduction. It launched two years ago in May, and when I found it, dude, it fell. It just clicked. Like, I had no idea what the blockchain was, but obviously I wanted to do a little research. I had been collecting in the TOPS apps, which were just like games for about five years prior. So digital collecting made sense to me. Right. So I heard about gpk. I do the research on GPK and what the blockchain is and realized that this is like true real ownership over digital items. And for me, that makes a ton of sense. I'm a gamer and I've been playing these games where you're literally collecting these digital cards. And I was selling those cards and you don't actually own them. Like, you can get banned. Like, those cards can be taken away from you for a bunch of different reasons. So this made a lot of sense. And I could see this, like, literally changing the world. Right. Like, I could see a future where your license, like, your identity was. Was ownable on your phone.

You know, you're a gamer, you're an NFT collector. I'm just curious on your thoughts of the blend of NFTs and gaming. And there's obviously this thing going on in the traditional gaming world where a lot of traditional gamers are sort of resistant to the incoming crypto version of gaming. So what are your thoughts there? Where. Where do you sit with crypto and gaming and the blend of the two.

This should be a really good conversation because I think I have a little bit of a different take on it than most. I think that my idea of like where the intersection is for, for crypto and gaming is very simple. I think when it comes to like adoption being in, you know, what I do for my day job is which is helping these brands figure out their strategy to market, right. How do they implement Web3 into their business in a really authentic way? That's the key to like really like adopting, right. So you have to keep the barrier of entry as low as possible. So for me I think like the adoption in the way that we see most success, I think in this space is going to be more like the Blancos, which is more like play and earn or play and own I think is what they termed. Right. I don't think earn is, is it. I don't see it being sustainable long term for a game to be like an earning mechanic. And so for me I really think like we're going to see games where the layer of crypto is simple. It's just owning your assets. It's Fortnite where you own your skin, right. Like I've got a fortnight. I played Fortnite in beta. I played Fortnite when Fortnite was a multiplayer zombie game before they even implemented. He started testing this battle royale mode. So if I could go back and I could take some of those skins, I don't know, they're probably only a couple thousand people own. If that many for some of them, then what is that worth for a game that's gone from, you know, a couple thousand people playing in beta to the biggest game in the world, right. So for me, I think like where we really see a lot of success and a lot of adoption is going to be like that very simple mechanic of owning like Blankos, I think has it right. You know, you play the game, you earn like the in game currency. You can earn some, some Items that are NFTs that you can sell if you want in the marketplace. But they're, they're kind of their bag is you, you buying these figures and they come boxed and then you have the choice of keeping them boxed or unboxing them and then if you unbox them now, you can play with them in the game. Right. And I think that, that there's a lot of value in an ecosystem like that that can be long term, right. Like I feel like most of my Blancos, unlike Most of my NFTs, are still, you know, 4 or 5, 6 to 8x what I spent on them. And I think that's because the ecosystem has done a really good job of like really, you know, supply demand. They kept things really low at the beginning, they've kind of increased them, but not anything crazy. You know, they're not having like these limited drops that are 5000. Right. Like their limited drops are still very much 500, 1000, 1200. And I think that makes sense and that helps to keep it a sustainable, like economy.

Yeah, you're part of bored API club. You're probably inside the other side and all the Metaverse stuff there. I'm kind of curious if you have thoughts on how ownership crosses over to Metaverse and kind of like the, the future play of how NFTs will play in that whole thing.

Yeah, I think that's what's like super exciting, right? Like a lot of people are like, especially gamers, right. They're like the concept of owning like a sword and wow. And taking it to Call of Duty is so ridiculous. Nobody's going to code for that. Nobody's going to do anything. It's like, yeah, you're right. Like it's probably not like the best use case. However, owning an ape and taking it to Fortnite Call of Duty, wow. Makes sense, right? Because now I can be rewarded for that ownership across all of those ecosystems. And it doesn't really take much on the developer side, right, to like code in like a special skin or something. For me, however, it does open up new community that they didn't have access to before. So I definitely think that's kind of like along the lines of what we'll see more of that. And then when it comes to the Metaverse, I think that's where you see like the biggest implementation of that. Right. Like that's where you see me taking my ape into the other side and then into Sandbox and then into Decentraland and, and having that ape translate to all of those worlds seamlessly and then give me the ability to then, you know, flex. Flex, you know, that, that NFT ownership in, in whatever way is necessary. You know, maybe it's a, it's, you know, perks on games. Maybe you get special perks when you're at the ape how. And you know, other side or you know, whatever. I think that's where we, we see kind of like the, the early integration and then I'm really looking forward to stuff like, you know, just, just again like the rewards and, and the, the brand partnerships that can pop up when you own an nft. Right. Like imagine like now you've got this Fortnite NFT and it was a, you know, special run with Adidas or whatever. And then a year after you bought it, they're like, hey, anybody who owns this in 12 hours when you take a snapshot is going to get the physical version in the mail, right? Like, people haven't really seen these use cases because one, brands are a little scared to, you know, implement these types of things without knowing exactly what the ROI is. But two, we just haven't had enough time, right? Like somebody hasn't been able to tell the story of collecting an NFT five years ago that now gets reenacted today, you know, that gets them special perks and something really dope and you know, whatever, right. I think time is part of the equation that's going to help, you know, with all of this. So I did take part in the, the first other side test, which is really, really cool. As a gamer, you instantly understand that like the technical accomplishments that they have made, you know, and I was watching, you know, the counter go up while I was in there. To have 25 people, 2500 people in, you know, one virtual space is an accomplishment. And then to have them all doing things like jumping and moving and emoting is, is a step above and then to have every single one of them activate their, their, their voice comms and, and for that to work in proximity across the entire level, all 2500 people and not like instantly cause any type of like, I mean it didn't so much as hiccup right. Like technologically what the other side is doing I think is really, really cool. You know, do I think it's the, the one metaverse to rule them all? No, I think we're very, very far from, from, you know, the Oasis, if you will. But I do think that it can be a lead contender in what comes next, depending on what the plans are. Man. Metaverses aren't things that, that haven't existed or haven't been successful before. I don't know if you guys know, you know, or have partaken in Second Life, right? Like Second Life launched in, I think to that 2004, 2002, something like that, maybe even 2000. We're talking about a 20 year old like metaverse and it has a full blown economy. If you bought land, you had to pay rent fees every month. All of the assets in the entire game are all user created. You know, if you want to go and buy a new outfit for your avatar, you go to a mall and there's stores and there's different designers who literally for probably the better part of 10 or 15 years have made a living selling virtual goods and people don't even realize that's happened. I think we'll, we'll see, continue to see the iteration of that and, and there'll be lots of other side, you know, stories that are successful and that people do, you know, get, get to be a part of. And specifically I just think that what I'm most excited for is to see how they allow the world to be owned like once, once it kind of like launches. Right. Are we going to be able to second life it up? You know, valheim it up if you will and go in and throw up walls and. With a really easy user interface, right. Like some people think like, you know, when they, when they see Decentraland and they see that you can buy land and you can build a home and all this stuff that like you literally just go buy a house and then you can use like these really easy tools and they don't realize that like no, you need like a. Damn, you almost need a developer to be able to build into central. Right. So tools to make it easy are really important. So if other side is doing something along those lines, then my excitement level.

Is tripled and it looks like it's interoperable. Like it's going to have all sorts of stuff. I don't know enough about other side.

Yet, but yeah, none of us do, man.

We all want more info. We all need the alpha.

I giggle Labs. You're talking to partners and probably building all sorts of funky projects that we don't know about yet. Is there some alpha you can share? And we'd be all ears, my friend.

Yeah, yeah. When it comes to what comes next, 2012 to 24 months, brands are going to enter the space, man. And brands are entering the space in really different unique ways that I think are going to surprise some people. You know, everyone has an assumption and this, you know, this conception of what NFTs are and what they mean and where they live. Right. Like they're all on Ethereum and they, they all have to be something that you meant that eventually becomes worth more than what you paid for it. Right. Like there's all these things that we have in our mind or what are NFTs and that's not the case, man. NFTs are the technology backing all these other things that we're doing with them. We're speculating right now, but like brands are going to now start putting this, this technology to action and they're going to start using it in different innovative ways. You know, when you, when you see, you know, and I have no idea, but like they announced just a month ago, Starbucks is like, yo, we're getting into NFTs, like when they come out with like, NFCS is not going to be what Adidas did. It's not going to be you're going to get some special Starbucks drinks sent to you once a month or anything like that. They're going to implement them in a way that they're going to try to get as many people to have NFTs in their wallet as possible because then they're going to want to have that ability to then have that touch point to those, those customers from that point forward, right? Like, they're starting to realize that this is more like, for brands and stuff. It's more marketing, it's more customer retention, more customer, you know, acquisition than it is money, bail, mic drop.

Kind of like about community, right? It's like access.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And I think like the big thing there and it's, it's why like, I really, I know, like people look at what my day job is and they're like, oh man, I don't want to do that, right? Like, I want to help change the world. I want people, you know, I want to be, you know, I want decentralization. I don't want to be working with, you know, CNN and, and universities and, and, you know, newspapers and things like that. But for me it's like, well, these are, these are all people who are going to come to the space regardless. Like, why don't we get some people on the inside and teach them how to do it the right way, right? Like, I think that there's a world where, you know, CNN, FTs make perfect sense, right? Check it out, you know, like they're one of our partners and they've done some pretty innovative stuff. And same goes for like a lot of other brands that people would not traditionally think fit or make sense for the space. They're going to use the tech, right? They're not going to come in and they're not going to do auctions, they're not going to try to pump your bags, they're not going to try to earn you a bunch of money, but they are going to interact with you through NFTs in some, some cool and unique ways. If you're interested and you guys enjoy the content and the interview and the chat that we had, you know, check me out on Twitter. I do. You know, I tweet. I do content every week. NFT Live. You know my Twitter at Ronan R O N I N D A C C. That stands for Ronan the Collector. If you want to type that into Google. I've got interviews out there. There's articles. I've done a lot of chats like this that I think are really excellent. I just did one recently with another podcast where it was all in VR, which was really cool and talked a little bit more about the early days of, of wax and, and getting into NFTs and what that was like. Outside of that, you know, if you're already a follower, thank you so much. You guys know I appreciate every single one of you. It means the world to me that you follow my content and you appreciate.

And if you're not, then hopefully you choose to follow on one of those channels and you get some value out of that content. And if you do, say hello.

Hello, Hello, Matt, we're back. That was the first time we've ever done a pre roll on the podcast.

Yeah, well, that's a roll even a little bit more behind the scenes, since that's the theme of Hustle and Flowchart these days, is we were doing a lot of interviews live and we loved the content from the interviews, but sometimes our guests didn't always match the energy that we had on LFG Live. So if you watched the first four LFG Lives, you might notice that we get on the show and we're real amped up and we're excited. We're like, let's go. And we're like, ah, this is the game I'm playing. And we're just yelling and screaming and crying and laughing and dancing and. And, you know, all of the emotions all at once every time we do an LFG Live. And then sometimes we'd bring a guest on and the guest would be like.

Hey, guys, what's up, guys?

How you. How are you doing today? Hey, guys, how you doing today? And, and so we realized that the, the guest, although the content is amazing, if we're trying to keep a certain momentum going, can mess with that momentum a little bit. So now what we're doing is a lot of the interviews we're recording, we're going through, we're chopping them up into, all right, this is the best bits that you're going to want to hear. We're taking out some of the, some of the stuff that it might just be like a little extra banter or stuff that we don't find much value in sharing. And we're sharing the end result of that instead. And it allows us to kind of control the momentum and keep that energy going and keep, you know, keep that same level going throughout the entire show. And none of us have to, you know, re energize after the interview is over. Right? That's one of the things that we were kind of dealing with is we'd have this high energy. We'd have. We'd do an interview. The interview would kind of slow the pace down and we'd be like, all right, let's ramp this up again. And we'd have to try to restart momentum.

Right? It really comes down to having the momentum that we want. And it's pretty obvious now, like, YouTube even shows the. It visualizes where engagement is when you kind of hover over the bar on the bottom on YouTube. And so obviously, momentum strong. And yeah, it carries over to engagement. So, yeah, we don't want like a dud of an energy. Like an energy bomb just happened, like right through the middle of the show and we're like, oh, that's a bummer. I wanted to also chat about. Oh, with Ronin right there just to. He. He had some dude's been in the game and he's working with big brands. He's over at Gig Labs, G I G, L, A B S and that they're like, synced up with what, ufc, NFL, cnn. Like big media brands, big sport. It's basically big brands coming to blockchain and NFTs. And yeah, just his perspective of ownership, I think, is my biggest takeaway is how NFTs are the technology. And that technology can turn into all sorts of stuff, but it's really about ownership and how you can leverage it in that way.

I feel like you and I and Buff, we all sort of had our own, like, Play to Earn evolution, right? Like our own internal evolution of Play to Earn and being really excited and really bullish on the Play to Earn concept and then realizing, okay, you know, some of this is actually a little Ponzi Ish. Some of this actually isn't sustainable and there's going to be some huge inflation issues where the token's going to devalue and devalue and devalue to nothing. You know, we. We kind of went through these evolutions ourselves where Hard Fork gaming, we started as a content network. We started to experiment with the guild concept. With the guild concept, we started buying up assets, lending them out to scholars. But then the value of these, these NFTS the value of the tokens that you can earn in game just got inflated, inflated, inflated and became less and less valuable. And we started. I don't think that the guild model is dead, the Play to Earn model is dead. I just think we lost a little bit of the excitement about that space specifically, and we got much more excited about this, the broader gaming space and what blockchain can bring to gaming and what digital asset ownership can bring to gaming.

And.

And I feel like Ronan did a really good job of articulating that sort of same sentiment, right? Like that, that same idea that, you know, Play to Earn, it had a run, that there's going to be more play to earn to pop up. There's still going to be a lot of opportunity in Play to Earn. But where the real technological advances are, where the real exciting stuff is that we're going towards, is really that digital asset ownership, that ability to earn an NFT that you spent, you know, 40 hours in game to finally be able to get the Sword of Destiny. And once you have this sort of destiny, you don't want to lose this sort of destiny because you spent so much time working on it, but it actually has real value. And if somebody, if you decide to stop playing this game because you, you rage, quit or whatever, well, this, this sword still has some value and you can go sell it to somebody else and prove that you once owned it and the transfer is now over to this person. And like, that digital asset ownership concept is where I really think the gaming is exciting. And then also the other side, or the. Is it other side? Other. Yeah, other sides. Right. You know, we talked about other side with him quite a bit as well. And what they're doing, that metaverse, that, that ability to have these massive online worlds like Second Life, which already exists. Right. But to improve upon that technology and also add digital asset ownership into it, that's, you know, blockchain verifiable. And when you see what other side did and how otherside got 2500 people all to jump in and open up their mics and talk and jump around and go crazy. And it worked like, holy crap.

We're getting simultaneously. Yeah, yeah. And like that technology right there, I mean, I don't know what goes into building a freaking metaverse, let alone a game even, but. But yeah, and they pulled it off. And there's a lot of cool videos of that you could check out on that video version of the interview you just heard from Ronin that's gonna just remind you that's a blockchain space, kind of like a co creation right there. We're calling it Blockchain Conversations and that'll be on YouTube this week, I think on their channel, Blockchain Space. So, yeah, we have a lot of cool visuals, so if you're into that kind of stuff. And go follow Ronan too, because the dudes on the pulse with brands and what they're doing there.

What else we got? Or do we want to read some other alpha? I don't know. You want to do some stuff off the cuff here?

Yeah, I mean, we've covered our rundown here. If you have any questions, we are watching the stage chat, so if there's anything you want to bring up, any ama, any topics you'd love to hear us riff on, that's why we're starting to do this live, is so that we can do that kind of stuff. Like, we. We have opinions on a lot of things, so if you want to hear those opinions, then we'll be happy to give you opinions.

And I'll talk about the. The way it's interesting you bring up opinions because we. We talked. We've talked about that too. Is like a lot of what we're creating here in like LFG Live specifically, we don't try to put our opinions in it too much. It's like we are more of the vessel that is just like this point that people and things meet. And I feel like we're just there to be the megaphone and connect people and projects and whatever's going to go down. But our job is to be those connectors and to facilitate the best of value in the gaming and metaverse space that's going to further the space for everybody. And we try to take ourselves out of the equation for the most part in LFG Live. I think this podcast is definitely different because.

Oh yeah, this podcast is definitely different.

This is our.

Mother. This is our show. This is our. I was censoring myself, but I was passionate because this is our show and this is. This is our opinions. Damn it. What's your opinion about this? Let's fork and go, San Diego. You need to use some of your hit pads. Need to use some of the audio pads you got more often.

Come on.

I don't have any of those programs, so. Trying to wing it. Yeah.

So we're Padre fans. So that's why I love to press the button that says let's fucking go, San Diego.

It means absolutely no sense to anyone who doesn't watch Padres.

So, yeah, you got to watch them. Padres and they're bringing the LFG fun to San Diego, that's for sure. But what do we got? What do we get? So wrapping this puppy up, get all the goods from us. Go join us at Hard Fork GG Slash Alpha. And that's how you'll find where all of our. All of our content lives kind of behind that. And you'll be the first to know when we're dropping new stuff, new digital swag like NFTs, tokens, and whatever else in between, we're going to give it to you there. So Hardfork GG Alpha and make sure to check out the partners that we mentioned, too. So Animoca brands, all the cool stuff. They're putting out blockchain space with those blockchain conversations and what else? Matt, did I miss anything?

No, that was a damn good show.

Bam. Well, you know what? Stamp of approval, we are out until next week. We're going to do this again live next Tuesday, whatever that date is, but Tuesday at 11am Pacific. So you should try and join us. If you go to Hardfork GG Alpha, I'm going to say it again. Make sure to get in that discord and then join us live so you can be throwing gifts our way.

One last thing.

What do you got?

LFG Live this Thursday.

Oh, of course. Yes. So if you are listening to this in time, this Thursday, which is the 28th of July, we are going live at 1pm Pacific for LFG Live, Numero Cinco number five. And that one's like about an hour long. And it's going to be fun. So we got a lot of stuff packed in that show. You don't want to miss it all the Alpha. More interviews, more segments, more giveaways, all that good stuff. LFG live. Find us on YouTube there. So peace out, Matthew. It's been fun.

It's been fun.

Till next time, let's do it again.