Pushing Frontier Tech in Gaming

Pushing the boundaries of what's possible in gaming often means embracing unproven technologies and building in the fog of innovation. In this episode, host Devin Becker is joined by Marco van den Heuvel, co-founder of Beam, to explore what it means to operate at the bleeding edge of gaming infrastructure. Marco shares the origins of Beam and its evolution into a gaming-focused ecosystem built around frontier tech that includes blockchain, AI, and beyond. The episode covers how Beam is navigating past the noise to uncover the practical, long-term opportunities these technologies can offer game developers and players alike.

The discussion also unpacks how AI fits into Beam’s broader vision, the future of esports from a tech-powered perspective, and what it will take for blockchain to hit the hype cycle “plateau of productivity.” Devin and Marco dig into the real hurdles in tech adoption, from developer onboarding to ecosystem incentives, while also speculating on what might lie ahead from AR to brain-computer interfaces. If you're interested in where the games industry might be headed next and how to prepare for it, this episode offers a grounded look at the intersection of emerging tech and gaming.

We’d like to thank Heroic Labs for making this episode possible! Thousands of studios have trusted Heroic Labs to help them focus on their games and not worry about gametech or scaling for success. To learn more and reach out, visit https://heroiclabs.com/?utm_source=Naavik&utm_medium=CPC&utm_campaign=Podcast 

We’d also like to thank Neon – a merchant of record with customizable webshops optimized for conversion – for making this episode possible! Neon is trusted by some of the biggest names in gaming and can help you sell direct without the typical overhead. To learn more, visit https://www.neonpay.com/?utm_source=naavik 

This transcript is machine-generated, and we apologize for any errors.

Devin: Hello, everyone. I'm your host, Devin Becker, and today I'm delighted to be joined by Marco van den Heuvel, co-founder of Beam. Beam works to push the frontier side of, frontier tech side rather, of gaming through blockchain, sport funding, AI gaming and eSports.

And today, we're gonna focus on pushing the tech side of, of game platforms and gaming in general. So just to start things off here, could you go over your background in the founding of Merit Circle/Beam and what Beam does today?

Marco: Yeah, sure. Absolutely. Thank you for inviting me over here today. Excited to be covering a whole broad range of topics with you. Yeah, a little bit about me. I originally got into Web3 back in early 2017. Uh, I think, you know, as a passionate gamer myself, definitely not, you know, high level, but just a regular casual gamer, I tend to, you know, understand digital economies.

And I think one of the things, you know, that immediately fascinated, was just, you know, not just Bitcoin, but also all the smart contracts stuff behind it. I think back then, you know, you didn't really have a lot of resources available yet to educate yourself. It was mainly, you know, Telegram groups reading white papers, which is what you did back then and whatnot.

And so, for me that naturally led into, you know, I never aim to be an entrepreneur, but led towards me actually not just educating myself, but starting to educate others as well and became a part of, you know, helping startups build digital communities, help them on the startup side on, Hey, how do you actually educate your users about what you're building?

I did that for a couple years on and off. And I would say, you know, as a gamer and as a passionate investor, it was amazing to me when Web3 gaming started coming up, you know, with actually affinity with UV back in the day, star Atlas or, you know, a couple titles that I think everyone in Web3 gaming would've heard of.

And that's actually also the moment where a hobby to me became solving much bigger. I already had my, you know, business on the q and d side, but on the gaming side started a gaming gud. And very shortly after, you know, this all went in the time span of a couple of months, I had two amazing co-founders join me, Mark and Tommy, who were experienced on the firm managing side of things, and we decided to, you know, take this to the next level.

And so that's where Merit Circle was born basically focusing on that mainly gaming side, but also because of the treasury and the QE that we've built, being able to help a lot of founders for true funding and investments on, you know, the infrastructure side. We are pretty already on the AI side, as well as the gaming.

And I would say that went on for quite a while until we took those learning lessons with the different fellow. I figured like, hey, we can be a bit more hands-on there. We have the capacity to do this both on the treasury side and on the man's side, you know, hiring the right talents around us. And we decided to do a full pivot and rebred to be so when we look at the projects, our company today.

We solely call a beam, you know, no merit circle in picture anymore. But when it comes to beam, basically one of the things we did was we built a gaming first tech stack, uh, also blockchain that is catered towards studios that wanted to have more of a, I would say, gaming first experience on the blockchain shadow of things.

The other thing that we continued to do was, and this is a bigger role today, I would say was the investment side. You know, we continue to do that. And right now we're in the midst of, you know, we always want to go where the market goes. We want to make sure that, you know, we stay relevant with us, you know, having the shiny objects, syndrome type issue.

We're in the midst of setting up, venture funds in Abu Dhabi called Beam Venture. Still, you know, in the process of doing it. So, it's a little bit early days I would say. It won't go too much in depth into it, but we're really looking to be involved in what we like to call is frontier technology.

And what we talk about frontier technology. I would say it's bit of a collective of different technologies in our eyes. So, it's all with the lens through web3. So we're looking for web3 element into the mix, but it is AI, it is still gaming, it is finance. It is deep in basically everything where we see real time, real life applications actually, you know, having a good product market fit.

So, it's really exciting for us to, to be, to be here. And for myself too. It's, it's, you know, an industry where you keep learning and keep improving and pushing yourself. I keep being, you know, involved in the size that excites you yourself.

Devin: Well, yeah, it's, it's exciting to have you here as well. I, I, I always find it interesting when there's a, a company that it's not just, you know, jumping in via Web3 and, and sticking for that and, and hoping to make that work out at the end.

It's the, the focus on Frontier Tech for gaming in general, right? And that's something that you guys kind of pitch yourself at being focused on, not just it, maybe you gotta start in web3, but that's not the, the only thing you're interested in. You mentioned ai, I'm sure there'll be other stuff as well that comes along.

Why that focus of, of the intersection of frontier tech and gaming and like. That specific focus as opposed to like other parts of gaming or just staying in blockchain?

Marco: Yeah, it's a good question. I think, you know, one of the things I just mentioned is that we're looking at where is the market going and where are we actually seeing, you know, product market fit.

I think within Battery three, we've seen a lot of experimentation throughout the years. Some of it landed, you know, and some of it has not yet, or won't in general. And I think for us, you know, having a need, initially being focused, I would say almost solely on gaming, to then adding AI to now seeing, hey, there's some other fields that are also really.

Taking off, it would be almost a waste not to, you know, take a step into that direction and be able with that. , I think the cool thing when you think about is that a lot of the frontier technologies that I mentioned, you know, the gaming, the ai, the finance, it all is very connected to each other and all comes together.

And so, like I said, it's more than just gaming, but what does excite me about the gaming part is when you think about the gamers, they're actually the perfect candidates to, you know, be testing new technologies on. They're often very understanding of technology in general compared to a lot of other, you know, customers in different industries.

But the exciting thing too is that they're also very brutally honest. And so, when you think about shipping, maybe some new AI tools and things like that, if those technologies cannot, you know, survive the first contact with gamers. Be it for maybe the UX is not great, the UI is not great, or there's latency or, you know, affects the economy negatively, you immediately see that back into, you know, the retention rates into general know general data into feedback scores, things like that. And the other thing to it with gaming is that you immediately have a very large user base, you know, at scale that you can test this with. Whereas with other products or other type companies, it might, you know, be much more scattered and take a much longer time to actually get this in the hand of a lot of people. And so, I think franchising m it's, it's in again a really interesting stage right now where, you know, entertainment is growing as an industry. People are getting more time, free time on their hands. And so, I think that this is only going to grow bigger. It's gonna be interesting to see what, you know, new things is going to come up.

But in the next few years, given that, you know, everything that we've seen in only the past two years.

Devin: Yeah, especially in gaming is, is kind of an interesting time. I mean, you're coming off of like the, you know, the tail end of, of sort of that hype around Web3 into a phase where ai, you know, may or may not be in a bubble at the moment.

And there's a lot of exploration trying to figure out what to do around gaming because it seems like it's, you know, running into a lot of issues. You even have, you mentioned AI and we, like, you've got this sort of recent controversy around ARC Raiders. I, I mean, like controversy more just like, you know, people kind of kicking things up, but, you know, it, it's there, right?

And, and gamers, as you said, are a very critical audience that will definitely give you feedback. On that topic then, I think going back a little bit to the blockchain side of things, I mean, outside of all the sort of financial stuff that that went on with and sort of the shadier side of blockchain stuff like going to where we are now. What, what do you think overall that blockchain technology, especially looking at it now, can offer to gaming? And why do you think that's valuable to still pursue?

Marco: Good question. Yeah. What I just mentioned is that, you know, we've seen so much experimentation throughout the years and so if you indeed look at, you know, the financial shenanigans, false scarcity aside, I think most people when you ask them, Hey, well blockchain gaming, you know, they would meet me say, oh, tradable assets is great.

But I think a lot of people also stopped there, whereas the question I think, you know, I, at least the question that I've been asked a lot, put it that way, has been, you know, one of my conferences that are not Web3 native, but you know, regular gaming conferences, maybe like GDC, you know, Marco, this sounds great, but can this not be done without blockchain, you know, technology.

I think very awesome. The answer to that is, yeah, sure. You know, a lot of things can be done without watching technology. I think that shouldn't necessarily be the first question to ask. I think the question should rather be, if you're looking at blockchain technology, are there aspects where this can really enhance the other player experience, or it can enhance the gameplay itself and I think there's various examples that you can give here. One that personally really excites me. It does go back a little bit to the economy. I think very often, you know, for this, a studio, it needs to make financial sense to be mingling with new technologies and to, you know, spend resources on adding that to your game, to, to justify doing so.

But I think what exciting to me is that you could have very transparent, programmable player economies. It doesn't go back necessarily to tradable assets, 'cause you know, owning your sword forever is a cool idea. But it goes back to really being able to tweak and monitor what your game of economy looks like.

And so, if I put this into practical example, because it might sound a little bit vague, um, let's look at a Maple story universe. Maple Story has been an IP that has been around, you know, since my childhood. It's been here over 20 years, I believe, and it's a really fun game, you know, but at the same time, given that has been around for so long, you have a hardcore audio that you know that they're one of the games in, might you, that kept shipping a lot new content that kept things fresh.

And that's also why they've had, you know, such good retention throughout all those decades. But. What does happen is that the player base, you know, starts recognizing, oh, this is immediately how I can achieve this new content. And you know, what was maybe meant to be a rare item in a game, you know, is immediately flooded into the market on day one because people figure out, oh, this is how it works.

When you then think about how could this be different? I think that you could think about blockchain technology as being able to create a transparent economy where you can say in real time, this is how often this item has been dropped in total. This is maybe how often this boss has done that today. And oh, well, you know, we're actually able to cap this on a daily basis and now you turn, you know.

Blockchain technology, not into, you know, the hype and the speculative side of things, but you created into a very living economy where there might be daily homes where people see a timer like, Hey, you know, this, this drop rate is going to be reset today. You can, you know, and it could be even time zone based with different, you know, starts of the day you could say, we're getting started.

You get this daily hunt of players that wanna be among the first people to, you know, hunt those items, play those bosses. And so, it's not just about. A new boss is finished on day one? No, it takes them a longer time because they might, you know, be able to kill the boss, but they haven't had the loot yet that they're looking for.

Things like that really excite me. Sorry, my cat engage. But things that really excite me to me are ways in which you can have, you know, a game that is much more gamified through the lens of boxing technology rather than just, you know, keeping it very basic. So a lot of this we have not really seen in, you know, real time yet.

I think a lot of it is still development. I think from Maple Star Universe as well. But I do see, you know, pretty cool behind these there. And that's just one example. I'll stop there.

Devin: Yeah. And I, and I think another good example of like specifically what you're talking about with player driven economies and things like that is also E Frontier.

You know, we're talking about games that are kind of like helping legitimize this sort of thing. And I do recommend that we actually just, I think, put out. I think Alex did an interview with them very recently. Make sure to check that out as well, you know, those of you listening, because it's always good to hear what they have to say.

Because they're also very much like Maple Story, very deep in running that sort of thing for a long time and seeing where that can go. Nice. But obviously we've, we've had the ups and downs, right, with blockchain and. You know, assuming, let's say it's on a hype cycle that we sort of see with a lot of new technologies, although, you know, we've been cramming them back to back, but assuming it's on a hype cycle, like we haven't in theory gotten to sort of the plateau of productivity yet, right.

Is where that sort of mm-hmm. After it dips and they build again and stuff like that. What do you think we really need? Like what, what needs to happen or what technology needs to exist or what do we need to get sort of to that plateau productivity where maybe not every part of blockchain is like, really useful.

Maybe like just he player economy part you're talking about, or the transparency or access or whatever it is, happens. What do we need to do to get to that point, do you think?

Marco: I think going back to my earlier points on the experimentation, I think we're at a point right now where we've seen.

So much experimentation on the battery gaming side, right? We've seen a lot of indie studios, new studios, but native CEOs pop up, try things. So, we've seen, you know, all the omics, we've seen pretty much anything that you could, I think on the camera side at least that you could have tried has been tried by now.

I think what we're looking for is pretty much more closer to the heart of how we know gaming than what a lot of CEOs initially tried. So, like you said, there are elements of blockchain technology that are very interesting and are actually enhancing the gaming experience. There's also elements that might be neglected.

And I think one of the things that, you know, funny enough is needed is more credibility. And that can happen to actually still larger players coming into the industry. You know, I think we've seen a lot of that experimentation go wrong. I think a lot of people are in it for, with the, you know, mindset of how refreshing would it be to see a large studio that knows the drill.

They have been in this, you know, gaming industry for decades. They're here to use, watch technology in a way that actually makes sense. And it doesn't just, you know, give them short term financial gain and a short game lifespan, but actually build a sustainable, you know, game, game loop. I think the other thing to it is that, and we will probably, you know, we'll see what I think we'll get a little bit more into this is the payment side of things.

Stable coins right now are growing so rapidly across the board with Defi, you know, , but at the same time, stable coins are also amazing to use in games. And it could be on, you know, the eSport side or, you know, creating smaller tournaments worldwide where, you know, it's borderless, it's quick. It's secure, it's cheap to send out payments.

You can have much smaller price pools. You can have much smaller rewards to send out to people very rapidly rather than, you know, taking a wire transfer that takes maybe 20, 30% cut, takes days to, to transfer, et cetera. But same time, you can also use those stable coins for payments in the game. Where that becomes really efficient and nice.

The issue right now is that it doesn't feel like this is a teamwork PlayStation type experience. What do you grab your credit cards? You get maybe asked your name, your address sometimes and you know, hey, your, your CPV code, you know, payment proof is through. When, you know, I had to recently, I want to pay with stable coins in the game, I'm paying 10 bucks. They're asking my whole economy, you know, background, like, how did you get your money? How much do you have? I'm like, dude, I'm making a $10 payment. I don't want to put my whole financial record on the table too.

Devin: Imagine if Apple had to do that for 99 cent in that purchase.

Marco: Right, exactly. It doesn't make sense. Right. So, I'm not sure this obviously has largely to do with the regulatory side of things. You know, wanting to make sure, you know, K-O-C-A-M-L. We wanna make sure that you're not getting money from maybe restricted countries that you don't want to get, you know, mingled in.

But it does need to have a more practical side to it. And so, what I'm hoping to see, especially for the payment side, especially for, you know, 'cause this has a lot of cool opportunities, is to see a little bit more flexibility maybe to payments, to, you know, a certain maximum amount. Be it 10 bucks, be it a hundred bucks, to actually be practical and usable.

First is needing to, like I said, immediately put out all your records on the table. And so, I think a lot of it still comes down to user experience. I think use user interface, when you think about that look and feel, very often, the blockchain part has already abstracted away, so you don't have too much hassle with, you know, how do I actually use this?

I think that part has been resolved pretty nicely. But then the practical things like the one I just gave or just, you know, those things need to be addressed. So, I think if we are able to get that. And go, like I said, go closer to the gaming card for gaming. At least I think that's where a lot of the solution lies.

But if it was a golden blueprint, probably everyone would already be be doing it this way.

Devin: Yeah, definitely. A, a lot of polish still yet to happen, right? As you mentioned mm-hmm. Hurdles that are not just the technology, right? When you're talking about regulatory stuff, that's not something you can just build away and code.

I mean, it'd be nice if, if we could code policy, but clearly that's not happening anytime soon and you've got the whole geopolitical climate. Just being a part of that, even, you know, who's in office might affect what's going on in any given country. And looking more broadly at, you know, the technology cycles and things like that.

As I said, we've had a lot of them lately. Do you think there's, you know, especially looking back now, do you think there's any connection between the blockchain, tech technology and it's, it's sort of state where it's at or where it could go with other recent tech trends like VR, metaverse, uh, any of the things we've sort of seen like little bubbles of, or hype cycles of over the last like 10, 15 years?

Marco: Yeah, that's, that is a good question. It is an interesting one too. I think when you, when you think about AI specifically. The way I look at it is that kind of a, like a glue that's really glues a lot of different technologies together. Like I spoke about way in the beginning of, of our call. I think in this case though, it is in an evolutionary type way rather than, you know, a buzz words driven type way.

I think when we've, you know, talked about the metaverse, you know, the up top a while ago, and it was really big, everyone, you know, in web3, two, everyone, everything that has to do with metaverse, people want to invest, wanted to be there because they saw, hey, this is the next. Big thing. But I think when you think about ai, but also the other technologies like you mentioned AR, VR, Metaverse, I do think that they hold a future and it's in a way that it's shifting us basically into a much more.

Open intelligence and immersive type digital world, We've all been, you know, gamers for a long, long time. Probably if you're listening to this, you've been, you know, you, you, you can associate yourself with this digital world. Like you care about your character. You care about, again, you play, oh, what?

You wanna come back, right? And I think that if you then zoom out a little bit, I think blockchain is what I spoke about with that, you know, tweakable economy, it's the technology that gives you, you know, the world, the digital world, at least trust and ownership. In an automated way rather than, you know, relying on human factors there.

I think AI is really what gives this life and personalization. You know, if you think about AI and gaming, it can have, you know, adaptive storytelling. I might be someone that's really into slaying a lot of monsters. Someone else might really be into the whole quest side of things. Sorry about that, in the Quest side of things.

And so as, as you're able to customize that player experience, I think that's fascinating about ai really. You know, it's, it makes it that I can care even more about my character. I can care even more about the journey that I'm taking. And rather than, let's say in the R Skype, I'm taking the same Quest side for my different characters over and over again.

Throughout the years, I now get a customized Quest line. When you think about VR and AR, they're still, you know, much. Smaller, you know, in assets. I do think that that too is going to grow incredibly, as I already mentioned, you know, it can, you know, make you more immersive in the world. I think where AI is personalizing this and making things more interesting in general, I think AR, and, and VR can really make this, you know, give, give the word that world presence, if that makes sense.

And what I mean is that you're not just experiencing this from a third person in front of a monitor type experience, but you're actually seeing things happening in real time in front of your eyes. And so, I think that's really, really cool. And a lot of this is still in its infancy. But I do think that those layers, they're going to mature together.

And so, I think that, you know, that connection between the different technologies is, is really there. I think there's a lot of value there. Like I said, people are getting more time on their hands and so I think that, you know, naturally the entertainment, uh, industry is going to grow in the future, especially given that AI is probably given, given quite some, you know, time back in our hands. And so I think it's, it's scary, which is the answer a lot of people give around AI. Parsley scary, but also super exciting. And, and, you know, sky is a limit type, type idea in your head.

Devin: And speaking of which too, I think it's worth mentioning just topically, , on the VR side of things that mostly that had been dominated by meta for quite some time, but we actually had that Steam, the Valve announcement, that included, you know, everyone's kind of focused on the, the Steam Machine side of things and the steam controller, but I think it's worth noting that that frame VR headset that they announced, once I actually looked into the specs and, and stuff like that, it was in early reviews.

It was pretty impressive. I don't think that's gonna make, you know, VR suddenly come back. But I think it, it's worth noting that some of these technologies, like we're talking about with blockchain and other things, they don't necessarily go away. Um, they kind of idle in the background and build up. And I think, you know, companies like Valve that has seemed to have been totally quiet.

On that still pop up and, and work on that. I mean, steam Machine was even like sort of them trying to do something they did a long time ago and then finally succeeded with the steam deck and they kind of built up. So these, these go in these cycles where they try to come back later. And I think that's, it's interesting, you know, we talk about this being frontier gaming, but sometimes it's like Frontier part one, frontier part two, you know, as with these like five year, 10 year gaps, it does feel that.

Marco: Way.

Devin: Right? Yeah. It's like episodic, but like big, long gaps, like movie sequels or something.

Marco: Yeah. And if, if, if you think about it too, some things. Here. I mean, you're giving the, a good example, right? They've been working this for a while, I think with some of those technologies. It's the same with entrepreneurship.

Looking back, you know, to the other track record, a lot of it is luck in timing. And so, when you think about you are here too, you know, timing could not have been right, you know, a few years ago. Maybe the timing is right when you know now that AI is here and it can actually make those worlds even more immersive, right?

So we'll see how that comes together. But I think timing is definitely a really huge aspect of it. But, cool. About Steam thing? Yeah. I've not looked into it too much, but I, I probably should.

Devin: Yeah, no, I was, I just happened to see a, a breakdown, like in review that was, as someone who's a pretty avid user of, of all that stuff, it, it was.

It's pretty interesting. We'll see what the prices come out to be on that stuff, because I don't think that's been announced yet, but just worth mentioning, just given the impact that the Steam Deck had got recently. And now open things up and, and valve in general. But, speaking of timing and businesses, uh, you know, not always being right.

I, I'm really interested, something you'd mentioned previously in, in private conversations as well is your guys' interest in the world of eSports. And that's a business that, you know, has had its ups and downs. It's been struggling from like a business standpoint for a while now. And that's one where like technology, like tech, you know, it's, it's underpinned by technology, but you don't always see technology as like a core part of it.

It's like still kind of broadcast. Even if it's on Twitch, it's still kind of broadcast media. It's still kind of typical sports mentality, which is like an older mentality. Where do, how do you think Frontier Gaming technology fits into that? What is, what is your guys' general interest in eSports?

Like, what are you bringing to it and what do you think of the, the business going forward?

Marco: Yeah, I think first of all, what is good to say from my end is, you know, eSports for us is in its infancy. Like it's, it's a very new type, you know, element that we're getting involved with. And I would say that largely has to do with, you know, from going to Abu Dhabi and Abu Dhabi, whereas their, you know, 2040 visit vision plan, they're looking to double down on all sorts of entertainment and technology areas, eSports being one of them, you know, but they, them building a whole hubs there, you know, trading centers and whatnot, is really cool. And it has to do with, you know, party ERs I'll give, I think, eSports in general is a very tough business model. You know, it goes back to you with, similar to regular sports, it's largely based on sponsorships and ads.

That's hard to skill when fewer ship across the board is kind of go going down. I do think that, funny enough, there is a little bit of a trend where a lot of people are not really looking to play games themselves anymore, but they're looking more and more at, you know, Twitch and at streamers watching games rather than spending all the time grinding themselves.

Which is funny 'cause I, I said, you know, people are getting more time on their hands, but they might not want to, you know, grind in and out more or whatever, to, that's similar to sports certain point, right?

Devin: You don't need to be like an avid basketball player to enjoy Michael Jordan and wanna watch that sort of thing. Right. Like it's—

Marco: Exactly.

Devin: It's what, you know, it is aspirational, but maybe you're just, you can't really do it yourself all the time, and maybe we are in that phase.

Marco: Exactly. Yeah. I think funny enough, you know, as a, as a long gamer, I think you'll, you'll not understand why people would watch, you know, other people.

Playing games, but if, yeah, as a gamer obviously is very exciting. But to, to go back to your question, how can you know Frontier Technology help it? I think that's, first of all a question that is largely to be seen, you know, adhere to. I think there's will see a lot of experimentation on what that's going to look like.

I think if I put it into practical term, I think. I just mentioned, right. A lot of people there are watching eSports. I don't feel, you know, watching, for example, the League of Legends worlds recently, I don't feel as if I'm a big part of that. You know, it's not really. Pulling me into the whole game.

I'm watching it. I'm excited 'cause I'm a league player, but it's not really letting me participate. I feel like with technology, for example, you can have that participation way. And what I mean by that is, let's put it back to, to blockchain, which obviously heard about, you know, the fan tokens maybe on the, the soccer side.

But it could be having a role on the eSports side as well, where if you have a van token, and obviously there needs to be some kind of buses model for the eSports companies, you know, they need to survive too, cannot just solely the sponsorships, in my opinion, in the future. But if you think about those tokens, you could basically prove like, Hey, I have this token.

I am very active, hands-on fan of your q. Maybe you can have me participate in the way that you're shaping the feature of your team. And I could be in maybe folding for certain things, like what is the New Jersey going to look like for our team? But it could also be really exciting things where maybe you can have early access to buying, you know, tickets to maybe, you know, if there are, if this could be digitally or physically, but type events.

It could also give that, Hey, maybe you are now able to buy yourself into a match where you can play with the approach, you can actually play with some of your favorite players in an eSport team. Like those type fan experiences. I think that's one example of where technology could, you know, be a bridge between just being a passive fan, towards becoming interactive.

I think the other thing I mentioned is that, you know, on the sponsorship and advertising. Right now, in that business model, it's a lot of guessing how many people are going to watch those games. And sure, you can look at historic data, but very often you see also massive spikes in, you know, viewership, of course, different videos and whatnot.

I think if you taken AI or if you take, you know, different technologies together. You can start really putting a value on this is you know, what your viewership is worth because you can in real time monitor, this is how many people maybe watch my stream. This is how many people actually interacted with, you know, certain elements of the stream where maybe they even spent money, you know, on certain products.

And being able to monitor that really closely and handy. You can also put a better business model on that, which I think right now too is still largely besides, you know, affiliate marketing largely still blankly, you know, flow. And I think the third thing, and this is, you know, if you look at League of Legend, just again, you have a lot Los, which is the E 14 with Bao, is a, a part of organized by a kit role.

What I find really exciting there is that, I mean, those are basically streamers that now went pro, right? So, they had a really fun fan base that have really, you know, I find them one of the most Switch streamers to look at because they're really interactive with, with their audience. But if you now think about the eSports side, I think that they definitely attracted new viewership to eSports because they have, they bring a fan base with them and they're actually good at the games.

That helps to, obviously for that, letting them in the eSports side. But what you can do is instead of having very long tournaments, having very long, you know, a large price pools, you can also start tweaking things to having smaller, you know, tournaments like I talked about earlier. This could be where blockchain has a role too, where you can have micropayments, such smaller price pools, easier distribution, but it also means that you can have this attention span.

Like split as well. There's more moments where people can be excited and not just the training moments, but also like smaller tournaments besides the big league. I'll stop there. Like I said, for us, I feel like this is still largely in its infancy. And myself, I'm still learning about that. I think the cool thing with this is that you can hire the right talent.

So obviously we'll, we'll, when we get more immersed on that. We'll make sure we have the right talent. But I do think that, again, Abu Dhabi is an amazing spot to be in when it comes to, to eSport. It's a city that is, you know, already building, like I said, venues, they're already building teams. They're looking to create a creator spaces and hubs.

And so, it's not just like a theory. This is actually happening in real time. And I think like we're gonna see a lot of experimentation to see can this also be an industry that can be disrupted? Because I think it is one that could probably use it.

Devin: Yeah. And they seem to, to be pretty interested in a lot of different tech that we've mentioned. And not just one thing, not just, not just even games, but also a lot of tech. And then the overlap with games. It seems like a big one. One thing that, you know, that, that I was thinking about when you were talking about the, some of the different. Ways to use technology with eSports, that you'd mentioned previously, like was around, digital items, like things like Providence.

Like something that I, I feel like doesn't even get brought up often is, is something like NBA top shot for mm-hmm. You know, where it's collecting moments and things like that, 'cause you're talking about watching gamers and watching these pro gamers and having some sort of like fan interaction with them that sort of collectibility, whether it be through sort of providence of, of items that they've.

Used or whatever in a game, or that be like collecting moments or that be, uh, even you look at like the skin economy in, in, you know, counterstrike. Mm-hmm. Some of that had a big relation to eSports or look at the way that, you know, skins get monetized for supporting eSports. And I think about even with the secondary market sort of aspect of a sports merchandise is a huge part of it. You go to conventions, you go to places, like there's that huge collectibility aspect. That secondary marketplace is something that blockchain does really well. And I think about like something like, which isn't using blockchain, but definitely could have.

Ubisoft's marketplace for Rebo Succeeds that they did has collectibles from sourcing. So like, I have ones from Rainbow Six events that I attended. It is a collect, you know, is an item from. Actually attending that event that I can sell on a secondary marketplace as if it was merch I bought at that event.

Now that's not, again, not blockchain, but that easily could have been, especially given ubisoft's proclivity for, for blockchain stuff. So, I think, you know, there's some interesting aspects there when you're talking about making money because obviously then that's a secondary marketplace where the primary maker of that item can also collect royalty, whereas you can't do that with like physical sports merch.

Right? So there's I think, some interesting opportunities there. For sure. Any thoughts?

Marco: Yeah, no, I think that, you know, you're, you're spot on. I think you have really good practical examples. I think that, you know, when it goes to digital economies, I mean, for games itself, you know, the question I, I said earlier is like, can you do this without blockchain?

And again, you know, very often you, you can, but I do think it adds a layer of transparency and a layer of just data that is, you know, directly verified, viable group rather than, you know, relying on the developer's words. I think if you look at Counterstrike economy, that's a little bit cooked now because of the recent updates that happened, right?

That's the practical example of, you know, we trusted the developers word. Something changed in the, in the, in the midst, and then suddenly this whole economy blows up because, you know, people can craft stuff and. I think that's, that's something that is rough. I mean, is blockchain resolving that? Maybe, maybe not, because you still have, as a developer, a lot of power to tweak things in the game.

Right? It's the same with, I could own a sword, but if the, if the developer stops developing the game and the game goes, you know, down. Well then yeah, but used to half of those things. But to, to go back to your examples, right? I talked about Maple Story universe and having those treatable colonies. I think what will be really amazing too here is that you could say, you know, I can prove that this, the gun, maybe that a ninja used in a Fortnite tournament.

That that was the, you know, gun that he had the final shot with that won him determined that goes on the secondary market. Having that piece of history, that's really cool. And so, I think that all those new technologies, they can add layers of information to, you know, I think Forer, a lot of gamers should obviously be opt in or you get overwhelmed with a lot information. But I think for those that really like to go deep and nerd out, if you will, in those type game economies, in those, you know, specific games, the, this, these new technologies, they can, they can offer, like I said, a layer of data and information that really allows them to do that, which is really cool.

And so, your, your example of the moments where you, yourself Yeah. You know, this is a good example of something that could be off chain, could be off chain. I chose to do it off chain. Fair game. I think with them it is a studio that has some, you know, creditability that is large enough to be able to maybe, and maybe I'm putting, you know, hard words here on my mouth, but trust them even there, it would be nice to have, you know, everything verified on chain. But I feel like with a lot of smaller studios too, you don't wanna, you know, rely on trust broader, wanna have it set in stone and be able to actually photo verify stuff.

Devin: Yeah, it makes sense. And also they, they are doing, I think is more of an experiment where also the, the, the money is in R six credits and stuff like that.

And it's like, it's a very controlled economy that's not, not trying to be like even the, the, the CS go steam economy, you know, yeah. Of ski. It's not even that level of like abstractions. It's more like it's for this game only this controlled experiment. But I could see it broadening out something more.

Especially, I mean, who knows, given the whole esof shift into the different sort of venture they have and all that. But you know, you mentioned like some of these other technologies and I think. We've gone through a lot of 'em recently, but where do you see things going? Because like guess, you know, your, your, your focus is frontier technology, trying to see where things are going in gaming.

Where do you think is some of the next frontier technology? Obviously this is not like investment advice kind of thing, but like optimistic. Where do you see things going that you think is exciting? Like, you know, we mentioned AR a little bit, but like, there's even weirder stuff like brain computer interfaces, all kinds of interesting other directions. What do you think is, maybe, maybe on TEE to at least be interesting in the next, five, 10 years for gaming?

Marco: Wow. Yeah. For, for, for gaming specifically, I think in general too. So, let's start on the gaming side then. I think on the gaming side, something that really excites me and is still in infancy are the agenda gap.

Obviously we see, you know, a lot of, a lot of teasing with uh, GTA around it. I think that's gonna be the first massive experience where you can actually experience this hands on. But I think in general, you know, like I said, it has the opportunity to really. Blast life in games again, in a way that we've not seen in ages.

Again, a practical example, if I look at Scape, I've been a player with that, you know, since my childhood and the last years I saw, you know, this player base was growing. But at the same time, the game in game felt that because no one was talking, people were just. And largely, you know, they were, they're just bots, you know, let's be FB honest.

And I think what's funny enough is that there's this developer, you started creating scripts that had AI components to it, not just on how you train your skills, but also on how you interact with other players in the game. So I started noticing a shift where players started talking back again, and it was not in a way that felt like, Hey, this is pure ChatGPT.

It is very, you know, standardized. I can, I can say something really randomly, you give me a recipe for, you know, baking for example. It was not those type conversations, but actually smart enough to be having conversations with me. I think that will, with that, she, she really more fun experiences in, in gaming.

And so, it's just not on the MPC side, also on the player side with the bot. Right. That is just realistic. I think anytime people can extract something, they will this, this way too. But to the game itself, like I said, you can have much more adaptive storylines and whatnot, and I feel like. That example is something that we're already starting to see a little bit engaged, but still so early days that I feel like within the next five years, that's gonna be the norm.

You know, you're gonna see that this is going to happen, and also being able to train against them and whatnot in a way that feel human-like and not like you're priority playing against robots. So, I think that's one. I think if we're looking at outside of gaming too, I think that, you know, you, you, you mentioned VR, AR a couple times when you think about ent, AR you think about the lightweight classes, right?

You have those classes where you can see things in real time in your life. I feel like those type technologies, they're right now still also in the infancy. You're not seeing this, you know, commonly used by people yet. I do think that that technology gets better. Maybe that is one of the practical examples of where, you know, AR is going to kick off.

I think it's really cool. I think when, you know price tag is right, I'll definitely buy one myself and try it and just see, hey, what is, what is this really like, and, and how do those technology, you know, layers improve over time. I think a long term, like long, long term is probably, you know, we're in five years you could even think about neuro input, right?

The, you mentioned, you know, the brain computer interface. I think it's, it's fascinating to, to even think about, you know, what is possible there. It goes back to my earlier point of it's scary and exciting and we'll see which elements are, you know, allowed by law. I think that there's definitely gonna be some restrictions there too.

Or maybe selling, you know, data or whatever. It was really fascinating. Some other things that, you know, when I think about gaming in general, right? Where, where is this going? Because, we talked a lot about gaming and how that is changing. We talked about each portion, how that's, you know, could use some change.

I think we're gonna see a lot of studios becoming, you know, rather than just chip a game, I feel like they're gonna ship platforms. I think with all the conversations that you're seeing around the app store, right, the high fees that you're getting, I feel like with this team, you know, marketplace or valve, you know, marketplaces, those things, there's always a lot of fees involved.

Whereas I feel like a lot of studios, the larger ones have the capability to realize maybe also parts 'cause of blockchain. Seeing that secondary economies are interesting business model, and so I think that more studios will want to take that power back in their hands and be able to facilitate those platforms themselves.

And rather than taking players outside of their game experience, keep them hooked inside of their own game and their own game economy. And I also think that that goes back to something that we haven't talked about. You know, funny enough, during this call at all, it's the user generated content, user generated content.

You know, it is already huge. Obviously if you look at Roblox and whatnot, Fortnite too, there is massive, you know, revenue involved there. Right now, a lot of that is still in transparent, is still human factors to distribution of maybe, you know, the revenue streams to those creators and whatnot. A lot of that, those things could be automated through the use of AI, through the use of blockchain, where it is transparent, automated, and it can actually scale beyond what it has already right now.

So, I think that that is really, really, really cool. I think the first thing, going back to, you know, people have more time on their hands, but at the same time. We're seeing a lot of people watch gamers rather than wanting to play it. On the other hand, you see mobile gaming keeps growing. It still does.

And so, I think, you know, in the next years we'll probably see, you know, more mobile first economies. We'll see, you know, if we're going back to Abuda, we mean our region is growing rapidly. You know, it's still such a small, I would say, fish in the ponds of gaming. There's like 600 million gamers, also the latest number that I've read.

But that's going to grow rapidly. SSD influx in, in, you know, eSports as they're building those hubs and whatnot. And the final thing, and then, then I'll stop this monologue, but when we go back to ai, and I may say this before. I think for studios, this is life changing because it's actually able to really shorten the build cycles.

So, you go from concept art to something that you can test. Much more rapid and it might not be perfect, right? It's obviously, I think, you know, very often the human factor still need this, almost always, but it is good enough to be able to get to the point where you have an idea, you go to concept art, you go to practical testing real fast, where this is good enough to see, you know, whether this has product market fit, can even use AI.

To stress test that and to hold logic behind this chance. That is fascinating to me. And so, I think that that can help not just the largest studios, but also the smaller studios, as long as they have, you know, the capacity to be able to afford, which sell hard. But it's true, those type technologies and, and use the practice.

Devin: I guess we ran into the same thing with blockchain stuff, right? Too, where it wasn't just like you, you would, there was this mix of, of game studios trying to like, experiment with it and not say anything because of the negative connotations. And then also like, can we afford to be like messing around with this while we're trying to ship games?

And you see kind the same pattern with ai, right? Where there's any of these technologies where it's like, can we, can we afford to like talk about it publicly and can we afford to work on it? Privately, like, I feel like we've seen that even going back to like online games or like live service games is, is sometimes a dirty word too, where it's the same kinda thing where like, we're dabbling in it.

Can we talk about it? Is this something we should be messing with? I feel like it seems like each one of these technologies tends to kind of go through that sort of thing where it's, there's the monetization side of it, which is kind of like worries people. And then there's the, the technology side of it, which is like exciting to game developers when they feel, when they see the potential of it and what it could potentially do.

But it's, it's, as you said, scary a couple times. Yeah. It's, we're, especially when we're in these, these hype cycles where, you know, like, well, we could be one second away from a huge downturn in it because. That's how hype cycles go, right? Where like, you, you, you're get a shotgun at every possible opportunity to try and use it, which means like 90% of it's gonna fail.

And then at some point people go, well, maybe we'll spend our money on something else for a while. So, it becomes a little, a little scary to do, but it's good. You're, you're still in a lot of these things and still kind of optimistic about. Going forward and still helping push those things forward. Like what do you see kind of working that maybe people aren't paying attention to on a lot of this technology?

Like we've talked about a little bit, but like you being still in a lot of this stuff that may not be as in the conversation as much anymore.

Marco: So, can you clarify a question a little bit?

Devin: Yeah. Just what, what are you seeing kind of working like, I mean, you guys are, for example, involved in a lot of web3 games that are still kind of building and stuff like that. What are you, what are you seeing working in that space, for example?

Marco: I think, well, the answer is that I think a lot of us see a lot not working where it sounds really skeptical, but I think that that makes it as more exciting when you see studios really pushing through the right way.

I feel like as an industry, you know, you, you see, you know, money dried up a little bit when it comes to funding new, new studios, and that's because a lot of money has gone into, you know, funding about three studios, seeing how they're going to use boxing technology, seeing, you know, what they can you do with it.

I think when, which comes to shove, there's only a handful of, has had even a little bit of revenue. A lot of that have gone under the water. So that goes back to what I talked about earlier, where credibility wise, I would love to see some largest CEOs now pick up, you know, pick up the shuffle and be like, okay, we've seen a lot of experimentation throughout the past couple years.

We're going back closure to the game loop. We're seeing ways in which budget can enhance, you know, the game experience. We're starting to use it. You know, you just mentioned like, with the new technologies, like our CEOs are in doubt whether they can afford themselves to, publicly talk about things, 'cause there's a lot more studios that are working with those technologies, AI and blockchain than, you know, are willing to admit it publicly. That is because as soon as mention of NFTs is given works, works for the dust to the skin, refuse right. Gamers are again, very fruitfully honest and very vocal, and I think that that's what has also kept back some things a little bit.

At the same time, I also can't blame them because of how many, you know, omics and how many issues we, you know, we have seen happening. What does excite me and what I'm seeing go right, is that there are some largest studios that are picking up the shovel and are pushing it forward. I think a good example, and I'm definitely biased here given that we are invested, but you have a gameplay Galaxy Building Tri Extreme, and this is this mobile bike racing game that I play.

You know, during my childhood it's been an IP that's been around at least since 2029 as well, similar to, you know, maple Story. It's been around for decades and are looking at it from, you know, zooming out. Okay. You know, not everything has to be Web3. Where does this make sense? And they're shipping, you know, iterations of the game in different regions of the world.

They're not close to an all world, world East, but they're not really maning with web3 part too much. We testing their core game loop, core economy with soft and hard currencies, and they're looking at, you know, where are we seeing that washing elements can re enhance this? So, some of those things are still, I would say, in the workshop, but it does give, you know, the way that they're thinking about this and approaching is that is what you know is in my opinion and the right approach, rather than rushing it. You know, what we see with a lot of CEOs rushing and teach out there immediately to basically use it as a launch pet to fundraise. You know, so game first, then, you know, blockchain seconds when you can actually make sure you have, again, that sticks around, I think, is the right approach.

Devin: Cool. Well, I think we'll get you warmed up for some, some quick hot takes here to finish things off with sort rapid fire finish here. So, feel free to be a little controversial if you'd like with, with some of these picks, but just to start it off and, and feel free to, to use the example you just gave if, if you think this is the, the one to go with, but what is the, what is a web3 game or app that still excites you today?

It doesn't have to be an old one, it could be a new one, but you mentioned Maple Story a bit. If that's, if that's the, the, the key one, that's fine too, but I, you know, may maybe something, maybe people aren't looking at as much.

Marco: Yeah. I think, well again, maybe, sorry, is an IP that I think everyone knows and, but there was a lot of buzz around when they went into battery.

You know, I think, a track stream, again, I am a little bit biased, but at the same time, I'm also not biased because this is one of the few games that on my phone, I've actually, without realizing it, picked up day in, day out for months. I played it and had fun, you know, even when it was on holiday, I would pick my phone and be playing it, you know, during dinner or whatever, or after dinner, you know, when relaxing while during dinner.

Devin: Don't, don't have dinner with Marco.

Marco: Yeah, that would be 'cause, you know, but I would just pick that game, uh, up and just play it and enjoy it. I think that's a really good sign and that's something that I've not had with most of the web free games. There have been games where I would play it, you know, uh, for a few weeks.

Like there was mafia, here's maa, was this city builder that's like Clash of Clans. And for a while I really liked it. Yeah, I was building my, my base and whatnot. But I think an issue that a lot of people in that three run into too is that when a game ships early, obviously you get a lot of good feedback, but you might also lose an audience when they've basically done all the gaming content that's there.

You have to wait for new content, but then after a while you get out of this flow of this daily habit, 'cause a lot of those games, it is about daily habit building. You get out of this flow and then at some point you just tend to forget, oh yeah, I should play that game. And so, I feel like if you have a game that has daily habit building and they have enough content that you know it, you can reuse in different ways, that's sticky.

And that's, that's a nice thing. Why, you know, try for me, uh, stood out.

Devin: Yeah, I guess it's tricky. Like that's something that early access games run into a lot as well. And yeah, you don't really have like the soft launch culture with Web3 because you have investors essentially as players that, like, you can't treat them like a soft launch audience you just acquire for testing.

Yeah. So that makes a lot of sense. That's, that's a good consideration I think for web3 games to consider. We've talked a lot on the optimistic side of things, on the sort of pessimistic, pessimistic side of things, what do you think is the most overrated tech you've seen in the last 10 years, especially in relation to gaming?

Marco: Ooh. I'm not sure I would call it overrated over hypes. Maybe I, I think Metaverse, but as a product. So, we, we had this phase, or, or is this part of hype Cycle where you saw silly, a lot of companies pop up and be like, Hey, we're going to build this metaverse, right. For X, Y, z Could have been for, for office reasons, like traditional business type things could have been in gaming.

I think Metaverse as a product is probably the wrong approach from the start because why would I want to hang out in a world that, you know, other than hanging out, I have no reason to be in., I see it more as a goal, you know, it's a direction. So if you think about a game that I'm already playing and I'm already, you know, immersed in that world, then a metaverse can make sense because I actually, I'm already in that whole loop and I am already excited about, you know, the content that they have. And so, I might want to spend time in it. , But I think other than that, it's pretty, yeah, a little bit overrated. And other than that, I think what, what is also a little bit overrated is the taking it back to blockchain.

There, there's a lot of, I would say, let, let's put this in the right way. There's a lot of chain features or features in general that have been created and shipped by developers where they're like, oh, this is cool, but realistically, no one is going to use it. Right? There's a lot of technology that's been built that is, you know, doesn't have a product market fit beforehand.

You know, it's not been taught about. It's been built because it's cool. And I think within that three, we had the mindset of, oh yeah, people will use it. They will overcome it because it's crypto. You know, that mindset is not the right mindset because the, the pool of fish, you know, you have to put in bad trees is way too small compared to the rest of the world where, you know, if you want product market fit, you want to have sustainable business.

I always like to say you cannot be on a lifelong, life support, which, you know, is fundraising. You need to build a business and come to the point where you generate revenue. And so, with a lot of things, I think that's where things, you know, go wrong and it's probably a little bit overrated.

Devin: Definitely. Well, one thing's on a positive note then, and I think we touched a little bit about on this earlier, but like, what is the coolest gaming tech that you've seen that's still kind of, it's in, in its infancy, right? Stuff that's stuff that's early, probably not ready to, to get near the market yet, but just something you've seen that you just think is really cool and you're like, excited for where that could go.

Marco: So, this is something that, and this first thing that comes to mind, this is something that we've spoken about during this hour before I mentioned that it is, you know, we're already seeing a piece and bits of it or piece and bits being teased, but for me that is the Gentech because, I think for me, if I'm looking about it and you think about c that can remember, maybe, you know, conversations that you've had with them or it can reason with you, it can collaborate with you on different aspects of the game in a way that doesn't feel super standardized. Like you said, you have a Quest line that maybe you've done on different accounts for year and year out.

You've never changed with the agent MPCs being able to have such more dynamic and personalized gameplay, I think that's fascinating and I think it's, for me, it would be a reason to. Which might be unhealthy, but spend even more time, you know, in games than, than you normally would because you start to rebuild well, I think you could call it relationships with the game in general. Right. I wouldn't go as far as ca saying like romantic, you know, the relationship with embassies. I know that, that that's a whole thing out there too. But I would say relationship aside as being, you get excited about the things that you can do within the game and it feels much more limitless than it does right now when certain things, you know, parameters are set in stone. So, I would say that's probably the coolest thing. Yeah.

Devin: Well, they better add that to Maple Story or, or you're just gonna even forget to eat your dinner. I think at that point get too into it.

Marco: Yeah. That's why I said unhealthy. Right. You might be, you know, just stuck in that loop. Yeah.

Devin: Well, cool. Well thanks so much for, for talking to us today.

Like, I really appreciate it. Beam's doing some interesting stuff. As you mentioned, some stuff you guys are working on in Abu Dhabi that hopefully will be interesting to keep a lookout on, checkout on you guys' website and social and, and everything like that But really appreciate you stopping by talking about the future of gaming tech. Hopefully we'll be touching, you know, touching back in, in five years from now and looking back. Very cool, maybe how some of it was silly and some of it was very forward looking. So, we'll see. Yeah, will be fun. But thanks again. And thanks to everyone for listening.

And also make sure to check out some of the other podcasts I mentioned. We definitely have been doing a lot of great interviews with a lot of different people in the industry, so make sure to check those out as well. But thanks again for stopping by, and we'll catch you guys on the next one.

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