In this episode of the Naavik Gaming podcast, host Niko Vuori is joined by Naavik’s own Web3 analyst Devin Becker to delve into the current state of Web3 gaming, reflecting on the past year and looking ahead to 2025. 

They discuss the significant developments in the industry, including the emergence (finally!) of quality games, the evolving regulatory landscape, and the shifting dynamics of funding, particularly for indie studios. The conversation also touches on the challenges faced by AAA games in adopting Web3 technologies and the potential need for consolidation within the fragmented market. 

They also discuss the challenges and opportunities presented by Web3 integration in gaming, the potential of Telegram as a distribution platform, and the geographic concentration of Web3 studios, particularly in Asia. The discussion culminates in predictions for 2025, emphasizing the importance of adaptability in the gaming industry.

We’d also like to thank nSure.ai for making this episode possible! As a proven industry leader, nSure.ai provides scalable payment fraud prevention that’s not just effective but tailored specifically to your needs. To learn more, visit https://www.nsure.ai/contact 

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

Niko: Hello, and welcome back to the Naavik Gaming Podcast. I'm your host, Niko Vuori, and today we're diving back into one of our favorite topics, web3 gaming. We've covered the space together for years now, and it's been a rollercoaster, to be quite frank, of innovation, new releases, shifting regulations, there's been some false starts, some bright sparks, but I think we can all agree that the full promise of web3 has yet to be fulfilled.

At least by the end of the year, 2024. But, how about 2025? Is web3 finally going to deliver on its promise? To help us make sense of where web3 is headed, I'm thrilled to bring back a very special guest, our very own Devin Becker here from Naavik. Devin and I have tackled some deep dive episodes on this topic in the past and whenever he's on the show, you know it's going to be insightful. So Devin, welcome back to the pod. It's been a minute. Happy new year. How have you been?

Devin: I've been good. I've been good. It's always great to, to be here to talk web3 with you Niko, definitely. It is quiet as it seems sometimes. I think there's always something popping off even in the background here. So it's great.

Niko: That is exactly right. There's a lot going on under the surface. The, the hypey days, the buzzy days of 2021 2022, maybe at least behind us for now. Maybe that's a good thing, but definitely a lot of stuff happening under the hood. And that is exactly where we're going to go under the hood.

So without further ado, we are going to dive into 15 questions, give or take, uh, to get our take Devin's take my take, on the current state of web3, how regulations could shift where funding is going right now, why platforms like Telegram, Epic Games Store, and maybe even entirely new channels that we haven't considered could shape the future of web3 gaming.

So let's not waste any time. Let's jump right in. Let's start with the obvious question here, which is you alluded to a lot of stuff happens, happens under the hood and not always out in the open. Like it wasn't 2021 when that was kind of the rigor to, to be out there. Can you give us kind of a high level sense of where we're at here at the end of 2024, start of 2025. And is it fair to say that 2025 does feel like a pretty exciting, potentially pivotal year?

Devin: I think so. I mean, obviously we'll get into some details on, on some of the reasons why I think so. I, I, I mean, I'm optimistic about every year, honestly, at the start of the year, I'm always like, this is going to be the year kind of thing, but it's like, it is always the year just for different parts of it, right?

Like this is a technology. This isn't a, you know, one thing's built and then it's done. This isn't just like, Oh, here's the flying car. It's going to happen in bits and pieces. So I think this year we just continue to build on what we've already done and we've already done so much in web three and it's a building thing.

So it's just, no one ever stops building. Some people just run out of money and have to build something else sometimes just because they pulled a little bit of a rug, but it keeps going. And I think this year there's a lot of reasons, like I said, that we'll talk about that. I think. Really make it so that at least we make some good strides this year, if not really kind of get to sort of that, that touchdown we're hoping for.

Niko: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Maybe we start off with just a couple of highlights for you from 2024. So what were like the big notable items from this past year or so that you feel like they deserve to be called out? They stand out above other moments that. Potentially set us up for success in 2025.

Devin: I mean, the big one that was the standout one to me was finally seeing like a good quality game come out with off the grid because I'd been waiting for that for a while. And I know a lot of the other games that were like really kind of hopefuls haven't really delivered yet. And we had, we had a good number of releases. Some of them were pretty decent. We, we actually started to see things actually come out that weren't just web games.

And obviously we saw a lot from Telegram, which maybe that wasn't exactly what we were hoping for, but it certainly did something. For the space and I think it all moved forward and we certainly saw Bitcoin take off. That's for sure. Like the ETFs for Bitcoin and Ethereum, I think made a huge difference on sort of setting up hopefully some, maybe some of that dry powder, maybe not for this year.

And so I think all those things kind of headed that way. And I think it also set up possibly some regulatory changes. Other things we'll hopefully see, but probably not for at least a month or two.

Niko: Yeah, yeah. Well, we're gonna touch on all of those things. I think I, I didn't actually prime you on that question.

I would have called out pretty much all of the same things that you just flagged as well. So good thing we're on the same page here. Okay, so let's dive into the regulatory piece because I think that is the big elephant in the room right now. You know, there's going to be a second Trump presidency.

Bitcoin obviously rallied 200, 000 as of recording. It's been pretty volatile between like 90ish and 105. But I think as I checked this morning, there was some Yeah. Good inflation numbers, some positive economic news. If that's volatile, I'll take it.

Devin: I know, and I'll take it. Those numbers are volatile.

Niko: They are, but Bitcoin particularly so. Like, I think it was 93 yesterday and it's back up to 99 today, right? So, moving a lot more than, for example, like Apple stock, which moves like 1.2% and that's a big day. So, all that said, you know, is that now priced in already for 2025? Like, did we see the big run up, the big bull?

You know, kind of rearing its head because we haven't really gone broken past 105 on Bitcoin and Ethereum actually is a bit lower than it was trading at its recent peaks, which is about 4000. Give or take, I think it's about 3400 today. Now, obviously, the prices of various cryptocurrencies doesn't necessarily correlate to anything that's happening.

Web three. But if we are being honest, intellectually honest, they do. Insofar as a lot of the powder that you're referring to, the dry powder is tied. To how well crypto does or doesn't do. So whether game developers like to admit it or not their fate to a certain degree is tied to, to crypto.

So let's talk about that regulatory environment. That is the elephant in the room. Donald Trump is coming in. He's. Implied after his initial, Hey, I'm anti crypto. He probably didn't know what crypto was. Now he's got like five different NFT collections and he's got a bunch of sneakers out there and things like that.

So he's had a bit of a change of heart, long intro there, but it is important. I think to, to address this head on, what does it mean for web three to now, after four years of a Biden administration that was fairly antithetical. To crypto. We are now potentially seeing something that is a very big change of scenery.

Devin: I think the big, bigger elephant in the room or the elephant Hunter Gensler being gone is the bigger deal, right? Even, even if Trump came in and didn't do much himself and Gensler being replaced with someone that's more pro crypto, that's already a huge change. Obviously there are other people, the sec, right?

It's not just him, but he was certainly the face of it. Yeah. And I don't necessarily anticipate another face coming out and be willing to take as many shots as Gensler did. So that already sets it up. And then I don't think that's a day one priority for Trump. I think I heard he has like a hundred plus executive orders to sign, probably not one of the immediate priority ones.

And that's like, we know what, like five days from now or so, like from time of recording. So it's definitely like, you know, not an immediate effect necessarily, but I do think like it is going in the direction of, like, Less regulatory problems, hopefully. I mean, generally, Trump has come out has been more like or less about regulations, more about busting regulations.

Same with his sort of undeclared VP at times. Elon Musk has also been very kind of anti-regulatory, very pro crypto. So I think just that whole sort of push. Has been very in that direction what that what shape they'll actually take though? That's the big question mark because they obviously have to push for some level of regulation, right?

They're not going to go full deregulation. So it's like are they going to do the right regulation? Are they listening to the right people? That's we don't really know that right like they could bring in people but even when he brought in people You know in his previous administration that didn't always go the way he expected either like some people totally acted different than he expected I mean that's same with any politician, right?

So I think we're an environment with a lot of question marks still and obviously that uncertainty You Right now means people are a little bit excited, but also have to be pretty cautious. So I don't think we see like immediate Increase in like investment or anything like that until that starts to kick it in It's your question about it being priced and I do think like there is a bit of pricing in already right where?

It was like this was off the back of etfs and things like that where? It was investment money kind of coming in and I do think that's good for games because that means there's money That's liquid in crypto that the people are in the space willing to pay Maybe take crypto and tokens and things like that and sort of interchange less about just straight cash If we see for example, like a stable coin sort of push this year I think that could be a big deal towards that and that's been something that's really been difficult to push and like you know Trump has been very like anti like, You know digital currency for for the, you know federal reserve, but I think probably pro stablecoin So that could be I think a pretty big development and if we see something around that Maybe that's the push we need even without like more regulation around it

Niko: Yeah. Well, I mean, reading Trump's mind, I think is, it's a special skill that very few people have.

Devin: I don't think everyone wants to do that.

Niko: So, let's see what actually happens, but I mean, for what it's worth, my, my two cents on this is, I think we're kind of, we saw the enthusiasm for Bitcoin and Ethereum and other cryptos kind of obviously tied very closely together.

I don't know. We're going to see any major price movements on that front until we actually have something concrete happening. Thank you. Beyond just like we think it's going to be good for crypto. , and I tend to agree with you. I don't know if it's going to change very much in the short term for web three in particular, because let's not forget, we're not just talking about crypto here.

We're talking about what does it actually need for web3gaming? On that note, I do want to ask a followup question, which is, you know, a lot of early web three gaming was driven by these very successful air quotes, successful token launches, certainly financially for the developers, right? Token issuances, initial coin offerings that obviously died down a lot, especially with Gensler and the sec and some of the positions that they were taking. , do you see that changing again? Like the, the ICO markets and the token markets have been fairly quiet in terms of, I mean, they've been happening, but they haven't really had the same excitement, the buzz, the hype, the financial pop that they had back in 2021, 2022. Curious to hear your thoughts on whether that is changing. Are you hearing from developers? They're like, okay, we're fast tracking our coin offering. We're, you know, pushing for this now that we think there's going to be a more favorable environment.

Devin: I mean, I don't think it goes away. I, I see it was, like you said, got quieter, but that never really, that whole mentality never went away.

This idea that I can come up with an imaginary. Form of money and get you to invest in it and sort of end around stocks and other like security investments That unless that really gets stopped stopped. That's still going to keep happening Whether it be you know, it's scams and rugs hard to say right like you'll get a mixture of that but that idea of like hey You know from the business side I could try and pitch this and I could try and get investment money from Crowdfunding or crowdsourcing or you know retail investment, whatever you want to treat it as Isn't something that's going to go away Because people are going to take advantage of as long as they can.

And then from the, you know, the investor side, the, the retailer or whoever it is, people are going to want to go into these things that are futuristic, that are exciting, that are going to promise all these cool things they could do. And you know, you have, maybe they're just tied to AI this year or tied to whatever new thing.

I don't think that really goes away. It's just a question of it shifting form. And there's just There's always money flowing around and it's certainly not like we didn't like somehow burn a bunch of money, right? We're still kind of a little inflationary even though we'd like to say we're not so that means there's still money Floating around and that's going to be put in something and there's still investment money to be made and I think You know, there's still gains to be invested in even from some of these funds that maybe haven't finished Doing it all yet.

So it just, like you said, it'll probably be quieter unless something significant shifts. And then, yeah, we could see a big thing. Like I still, like, I didn't get just the, which is the regulatory part. But like South Korea is a huge question mark right now. We have the president that was supposed to be very pro crypto.

Didn't turn out not to be. And then he just, They're actually trying to arrest him right now.

Niko: Yeah, impeaching him and arresting him. Yeah. As far as I know, they're still haven't arrested him yet. Right. I mean, as, as we're recording, this is a Wednesday, January 15th. Like that, that literally was in headline news yesterday.

Devin: And they're like outside his place, like trying to arrest him. So like, I just mean that that could be a shuffle. I mean, I don't think it immediately swings pro favor, but they've been setting up regulation in South Korea to kind of like better protect investors and better, and which is the whole point, right?

Like avoid scams, better protect people and oust this guy. I don't, I don't know if we see an immediate shift, but like it could be a more favorable environment. That's a big deal. I think personally, because South Korea could be, could be pretty big in crypto if they're still into it. And who knows what will happen with these broader environments with like China, Russia, things like that. When we start appointing more sanctions, tariffs, other things, who knows? Maybe we start to see more money flowing through crypto and other things that aren't necessarily the normal financial environments because of all this impact of these elections, these changes, uh, in sort of heads of state that we are continuing to see really into this year, especially.

Niko: Yeah, for, you know, cryptocurrency just struck me kind of ironic that they're built generally on decentralization, especially Bitcoin, of course, but more broadly, and yet they are still so beholden, so to speak, , on centralized governments. You gotta be able to cash out somewhere. Literally individual heads of state, like individual human beings around the planet, a handful of them control the fate, essentially of Bitcoin.

Whether crypto, web3gaming in general, kind of grows or declines or until we get to the point where we can cash

Devin: Out without a bank, then if you get everyone will just take crypto to exchange, then we end up in a situation where maybe that's not the same, but for right now, absolutely.

Niko: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. I'm going to skip a question I had planned on Telegram. I'm going to come back to that in a second. Cause we're talking about money. And it's giving that we're talking about money. Let's talk about the funding landscape here. Traditional VCs. I think we talked a bit about the token launches that is still potentially there.

I think to your point, it's never gone away, but it's nowhere near as effective as a fundraising tool as it was back in the early days. So if new studios want to come out there, either they got a bootstrap and we're going to talk about the indie landscape actually in a second, or they need to raise funding, right?

Like that's your kind of. Your two paths forward here we saw a little, I had George from game seven. They had a very comprehensive report out towards the end of last year, covering the big landscape, a lot of it on the funding side of things, and they tracked about a 17% increase in 2024 compared to the prior year.

But of course, 23 was like. You know, 80 percent down from, from the highs of 2021, 2022, and his insight or game sevens insight really was that a lot of investors are coming back. There are more rounds, but they're much smaller rounds. There are smaller bets. They're not these big, you know, deck of millions of dollars into a seed round kind of situation.

So what are you seeing? What are you hearing? What are you expecting from VCs this coming year in 2025 is pretty They're going to be additional investment coming in. You see that 17 percent rising again, are the bets going to be bigger? Are they going to stay small? Still your thoughts.

Devin: I mean, I think there's definitely a more caution, right?

Where it's like, okay, clearly a lot of those bets didn't deliver anything, right? They get a lot of, because it was investing in a lot of amateurs. And so then you, you started to see more people that were like experienced game developers, for example, being involved. They'll go, Hey, I worked at blizzard. I worked at riot, whatever.

So and so. And that became the thing. And some of those are still in the works, right? Some of those may be delivered. Some of those maybe didn't, but like those take time. Whereas like the, these smaller bets where they're trying to hope that something will, will hit big. You see, you see stuff like Telegram, which, you know, as you said, we'll get to, those could be a good target for like that, those kinds of smaller projects for these small bets, where it's just like, Hey, this is not like a five year development cycle.

Let's just get something out there. But I think anyone who's going to, who's going to have some big claim to Excites VCs can still drive the money where they're like, whether, like I said, that'd be AI or some other new technology. We've had a lot of technology pushes. We went from VR to, to web three to AI, like really fast.

It was almost like a year each. And so because of that, you know, or the metaverse in there as well, of course. And so because of that, we're almost getting like a new tech a year. That's becoming the big exciting thing. And, you know, whether that be attached to web three or not, if it is, chances are, you'll see investment money thrown at it because it's still part of it.

And the AI has definitely been part of that. The agentic, I don't even know how to say it well, agent based AI stuff for web3 is a very interesting proposition in terms of what it brings versus traditional like API integration and things like that. So that could be a very interesting vehicle for some investment money, especially because it is a way to have sort of AI, Dealing with financial stuff that could be interesting, whether that be games or not games, it's hard to say.

Right. But that, that definitely is a interesting area potentially, but as you said, probably smaller checks, it's just less or just more checkpoints, more milestones where they're just like, okay, we'll give you all this money. But only if you like hit this milestone, hit this milestone, just little, little better safeguards, but there still will be people with loose wallets.

It's just. That's how it is. I still see big investment amounts. It's just, you know, less frequent and a lot more small, you know, spread out ones as well among smaller bets. So they're just changing their betting strategy, it seems like, but I don't think there's stop spending money. It's just maybe there's less to go around at the moment.

Niko: Yeah, it's interesting. You bring up VR and the metaverse, and I was actually just reading Matthew Balls, MatthewBall.co. Big, ginormous, 200 and something page report on the gaming industry. It dropped, I think yesterday or the day before I was reading it yesterday. And I'm actually still not all the way through it, but one of the big headline grabbing, slides I saw was, you know, Facebook meta pumped 85 billion into their metaverse initiatives.

And of course, Zuck was extremely bullish on that on many, many, many, investor calls quarterly earnings calls over the years, or the last Two, three years and over the last year or so, we've heard very little from them and not surprisingly, because according to Matthew ball, they've lost 75 billion, 85 billion.

So, um, you know, it's an NVR as an entire category is only between one and 2 billion. According to him, I don't know exactly how he's measuring it. You know, caveat supply. I'm not a financial analyst, all that stuff. But nonetheless, the V. R. A. R. And the metaverse certainly haven't delivered. And there was a lot of excitement.

There was a lot of excitement. Okay, I see you. Okay, those of you were listening or not on the YouTube video. The Devin is not entirely sure he agrees with that statement. But okay, let me finish my thought though. And then I'll have you push back on that. No, no worries at all. There was excitement from it from investors, I think less so than there was for Web three or has been for Web three.

So I'll, I'll grant you that. But there definitely was excitement. And of course, you know, when somebody is as like visionary or close here as Zuck is saying, like, I'm betting on the metaverse, I'm essentially betting a good chunk of the company on it, you know, investors tend to listen, right?

Market tends to listen, and it has not paid out. It is not paid off and I don't think it will quite frankly, I'll make that promise right here. Like I was never myself very bullish on it, but, but now I'm really like, it's not going to happen. I'm prepared to be wrong, of course, but that's what I'm saying.

I think with we3, it's does web3 stand the risk of being quite similar or are they just fundamentally different? Like metaverse just needs a lot more investment, obviously. So like, that's an obvious difference between like, you can make smaller bets in web three, you can do like little hits on telegram kind of stuff.

Like we're going to talk about in a second in these, in these Accounted for the vast majority of titles in the last year or two. , partly because they needed to be small because they didn't have the money. , but i'm just i'm curious to hear your thoughts on does web three have a risk? Like an existential risk essentially the way vr ar the metaverse type stuff Clearly has faced like this existential threat where they essentially go extinct because there's just no more money There's no more consumer excitement anything like that is web three in that You Category.

Devin: No, the reason, the reason I said no is, is first and foremost, I'm a very different types of things in the sense that VR is, is primarily a hardware technology. There's definitely a software component for sure. And that's been part of the problem is the software component as well as the hardware component.

And that is, that can fall on its face because that is a consumer device that requires not just investment in design and development, but also manufacturing, distribution, retail sales. All that stuff that is not applied to web three at all, because web three is a technology, but more importantly, it's a decentralized technology.

It is, it is similar to the internet. It's like, if people stopped investing in the internet, would that have failed? No, it probably would have just taken longer because it was still a technology that basically it was based off people using it, not necessarily based off people investing in it. People invested in it because people were using it, but it was kind of that sort of a, you know, chicken and egg sort of thing over time that, that took time to build up.

I remember all the doomsayer people around it. The internet. And I know we've brought this up around web three quite a few times, but I think it's the same thing. It is a networking technology that is just works off the back of the internet, but also works fundamentally different. And I think it's important to acknowledge that even if everyone stopped investing in it and people were just building because they were interested in it, it still pushes forward.

And that's the thing is it's like, doesn't have to be money in it for people to build it because it's so decentralized. You know, people like, you know.

The ethereum people all of them would still continue to push it bitcoin would still do its thing It doesn't have to make a ton of money Obviously the miners would like to make profit but it's just one of those things that I think that sort of makes it a little Bit more failure proof, but it can definitely lose popular attention It can definitely lose funding in terms of like that technology getting developed, you know It takes money to get that to go faster the the vr metaverse problem that you bring up though I think is important to like acknowledge that You It was a failure in the sense that it didn't provide a commercial return that was expected in that sense, but it absolutely was needed to push the technology to where it was.

As someone who's been using that stuff since the very beginning, the Oculus Rift stuff, who's used VR since before that it has taken time. It has made significant improvements over time big improvements But those are easy to ignore when you're like, it's not here yet If you're like watching writer player one and you're like, why am I not there yet?

Yeah, you're gonna be disappointed. You'll be like it's a failure that like but the idea of the metaverse was too nebulous Like that's just that's what it comes down to is it's too vague To like if if people were talking about what Facebook is today back when Zuckerberg was first like Coming up with it or whatever it would have said like, well, that's a weird vague idea.

That doesn't make sense. Right? Like it was Friendster was barely a thing. MySpace was barely a thing. It was not really a thing yet. And it just takes time. And I, I don't know if we necessarily get to AR before VR, for example, and Metaverse becomes part of that, but just like Web3 Metaverse is an idea.

Everyone's excited about it's just I don't know if you could just build it right away. Same with web 3 You can't just force it into existence with money. You could build infrastructure. You can get people excited about it You can throw money at you can build content But you know that doesn't that doesn't guarantee that we get there today that being said Just like VR, we've made a huge amount of strides, even since 2022, when the funding supposedly all dried up and 2023 was slow and 2024 was slower.

We've come a long way. I think if you really think back to the last two years, a lot more has happened than we'd like to acknowledge, but again, just because we're not mainstream everywhere or everyone running blockchain on their phones kind of thing. And we think, oh, it has, it just hasn't worked out, you know, maybe someday we're all early quote unquote.

So it's, it's important to have perspective.

Niko: We've been early for many years now. So that was, that's still a thing. I know that. Oh, we're early. We're early. It was still so early, I, I agree with most of what you said. I think the only caveat or not caveat, but like the only nuance I'd like to throw in there a little bit is that yes.

Blockchain technology in theory is decentralized, but as we mentioned earlier in practice, like a lot of these chains that developers are building on, like you're taking a bet as a developer that that chain is going to be around and that chain is being maintained by a centralized organization. And a lot of these have raised huge amounts of funding and they also need to make returns.

Right. And at some point their investors are going to run out of patience and they're going to. Have a business model that doesn't work or does TBD like we haven't seen, you know, a lot of that. They're all private, so we don't actually know what their financials look like other than whatever is happening on chain.

So I'm I'm very, very curious to hear. I mean, there was a point. I think when I had George on not last year, but the previous year from game seven, he had a report that said that they were like, Mhm. I forget. And I was literally in the hundreds of different chains that were almost all of the 80 percent of them were focused on conversation on that episode as well.

It was wild. It's wild. Right. And so like, that's just not sustainable. You can't have a planet on which there are hundreds of different game chains that developers are supposed to choose from. They're not all going to survive. That's going to have a knock on impact on developers. That's going to have a knock on impact on funding.

So I don't think it's as simple as saying like, Oh, web three is it's Based on decentralization.

Devin: Keep in mind, people can fork those things.

Niko: People can fork? Yeah, they can. But you know, but that, that, that is messy as hell.

Devin: That is messy as hell. I mean, there's, there's a reason like not, not all of them are meant to survive.

And I think this idea that we're going to have a thousand different chains and everyone's going to be using a thousand different chains with all these bridges and crazy weird infrastructure stuff. It's, I mean, that's obviously not. Likely, but I think even back to like ISPs, right? When you remember when like there was, everyone was running an ISP back in the early internet days of dial up and things like that.

And then AOL thought they could come in and just be like the internet, but then, you know, I just went kind of back to this decentralized sense of ISPs, but then like slowly you had consolidation, like Comcast and Verizon end up controlling like a good majority of it. And you end up with a situation where it's like, yeah, like the ISPs didn't.

Go away. They just got bought up. They just got absorbed. And maybe we see that with a lot of these chains. Maybe they get absorbed into bigger funding. Maybe they get like the technology forked or maybe they just weren't a good fit for what people needed. A lot of this is just product market fit happening in real time in front of us.

And we can see like, do people care about this? And I think, you know, you probably remember this from the most recent game seven report, a lot of layer twos and layer threes. And like, that's where we're really going to be testing product market fit. Do we need all these? Obviously layer ones we need, but it's like, that's the nice thing about like EVM and stuff like that.

If people go, Hey, we're going to develop to a technology that is portable. Then it doesn't have to be this, this huge fail state where we, same with the internet and ISPs, people Google like, well, that ISPs failed, but the internet technology still works the same. We can use a different ISP. I can still dial up and still use my same modem that I bought my U.

S. robotics, whatever. That sort of thing is important that we have standards, that we have protocols, that's what keeps it from failing, but that's also what keeps the metaverse from existing, it seems.

Niko: Yeah, well, that's exactly right. I mean, are you then saying that 2025 is a year when do we need consolidation?

Essentially is what I'm asking. Do we need consolidation in order for Web three to realize this potential? Is it too fragmented still to this point? Are they just too many experiments that most are doomed to fail? We need some kind of standard to coalesce, and that can only really happen through some kind of consolidation, whether it be consolidation by default, because 80 percent of them to fail because they ran out of money, and they never really had a Proper use case in the first place, or is it consolidation more meaningfully, more, , deliberately where you're going to see some of the larger players like immutable potentially, or, you know, others start to kind of gobble up some of the smaller ones and, you know, actual protocol start to emerge.

Devin: I mean, you already said it immutable pretty much already was that right? They already became that consolidation and polygon pretty much was like, all right. You know, throw our hands in the air. We're going to switch to being a protocol thing. And so you already saw a taste of that, right? Where you saw, okay, the bigger fish was like, Hey, we're better positioned to do this.

So we're just, we're going to take it over. And I think maybe that's not, we, you know, that might not be the end of it. We might see that multiple times, you know, Animoca brands seems to have been just sitting on top for a long time. So maybe they end up absorbing things. It's hard to say, right? Like funding things.

Happened like a lots of behind the scenes things happen, but I think everything, every market, every technology goes through those cycles of like fragmentation, experimentation, product market, testing, like all that stuff to see what works and then you consolidate when people start running out of money, people need to be able to sort of.

Get things going, but they obviously didn't plan correctly. And I think maybe we, maybe we see that with games. It's a little harder to do that with games, right? It's a little harder to be like, okay, let's just go ahead and consolidate that game. Obviously we saw that with Embracer, right? Trying to do something similar to that.

And that went the other way because they overdid it, but it's inevitable. We'll go through these cycles and it's just always a question of where are we in that cycle? Not, is it going to happen? It always happens.

Niko: Well, I mean, that's a nice segue actually. It's my next plan question, which is, uh, talking a little bit about kind of who are the players right now on the, on the gaming side.

And again, this was in the game seven report. They tracked the market and they, analyze that over 90 percent of new games, especially last year came from indie studios. They have a definition of indie, but basically in this context, I mean, small, you know, for lack of a better definition, , so that kind of to me, that leads nicely on from what we just talked about, which is in the absence of real consolidation in the apps, you know, when you're building on quicksand, when there's all this fragmentation and these experiments going on, and you don't really know where the foundation is going to be. It's very hard for AAA publishers and big VCs with big checks to write to back bets that might take, you know, multiple years to come to market. We did see it happen in 2021, 2022, and it hasn't played out that great for most of those players, right? Not, not everyone there's.

And some of the stories are still to be written. So my, my question to you really is, and maybe it's more of an observation, but it's also a question with over 90 percent of these games coming from indie studios into web. Three. Is that something you continue to expect to happen in 2025 until this consolidation period, this kind of Cambrian we've had the Cambrian explosion.

Right now we need, you know, a meteorite or asteroid or whatever to hit the planet and kind of wipe out, you know, the species that were not meant to survive. And at that point you suddenly have the more kind of evolved species. I'm, I'm straining this analogy. To all hell here. But nonetheless, you can strain them however you want.

So, so, Devin, what do you, what do you think about 2025? Like, is that going to be more of the same? More of these smaller studios, which is why you don't have a lot of buzz. I don't have stories. You don't like somebody who raises a half a million precede to experiment with three. That's not really newsworthy.

You know, if you have like limit break raising 150 million or whatever it is like that is newsworthy, right? But you haven't seen much of that recently. And I don't know if we're gonna see it in 2025.

Devin: We're in games in general as well as I think many other industries. We're seeing huge de risking in triple a Especially right where it's like just all these triple a failures.

It is very risky Everyone's just gonna fall back on ip that they have De risk things take maybe some small bets here and there and hope to build some new franchises Maybe with sub companies like smaller studios underneath the bigger studios similar to what happens in movies and things like that So we're in this situation now where it's like triple a can't really afford to risk like that So it's not that we couldn't see triple a, you know try and Dip their hand in it, even if it's just, attaching it to something they'd already been building so that it's already partially, you know, down the road, it's more just, it's not really worth the risk, especially considering gamer backlash, things like that, that could happen.

I think telegram kind of showed that like, if you could just try and innovate quickly in a small market. That's probably like the better approach at the moment still until we find some stabilization because we don't have a native platform for web3. We don't have a place where it makes sense. We don't go this consoles for web3 is web3 console.

Everyone plays web3 games on it, right? We don't have like, it's not a mobile phone market. It's not a webpage that everyone goes to. It's not some destination thing. Telegram, you know, is kind of. Try to do some of that, you know, we have that also with other like mini games and we chat and all those other things You know social network stuff like facebook was originally that and we still are kind of going to that with messengers So there's this idea of like there are some potential sort of destinations But without that it doesn't even make sense for for triple a games to to be involved right now Where they're just trying to get their ducks in a row to even like stay in business I mean you look at someone like ubisoft who still Take took big swings with, with, you know, champions tactics, things like that at web three, despite the fact that they're just houses on fire at the moment, and they were still like, let's, let's do it. Like, let's just keep going. Let's keep pushing it.

Niko: And obviously just to jump in there, like, I mean, Ubisoft bankruptcy in the news again, this week, like very, I mean, two years ago when we were covering two, three years ago, when I started covering the web through space for, for Naavik, like we were all excited about the fact that like Ubisoft, oh, there's this great name.

They have this great pedigree. Like they have this great IP they're doing web three. Look, see guys like that's. That's a good thing. Fast forward two to three years, like a lot of that now looks kind of foolish to say like, Hey, it was great because yeah, their house is on fire. They're talking bankruptcy.

There are big triple A bets have failed and kind of traditional space and their web three experiments now look like.

Devin: Kind of silly, quite frankly, because they went back and relied too much on their IP as well at the same time, like, , you know, they're just kind of milking their franchises at that point.

And so it's like they're, they're stuck between the two. They can't innovate because they can't afford to anymore and they can't just milk their IPs because they're not doing a great job of that. And so it's, yeah, they're in a stuck place, but I think we see a lot of that in, you know, like if something's not call of duty.

Like, does it work, you know, Marvel rivals even was a huge risk when it, when it comes to like, compared to what just recently happened with Concord. So I think you're going to see a lot of that. Like there's no reason for 2025 to be AAA games going, let's swing for web three. I, I hope. I'm wrong on that.

That would be awesome to see. And maybe there's been some stealth stuff people have been working on. I just, I think it's just too big of a risk in this market right now. Whereas what about

Niko: Sorry, just to jump on real quick here. What about largest studios though? So, so AAA, I think I buy, like, I think they're, they're big bets, big risks anyway, and then you've layer in web three component, you know, I think we can all agree that that's probably a bridge too far for most of these guys.

But what about largest studios trying to continue to experiment? And so we talked about Ubisoft. Not panning out very well. Zynga tried up the sugar town. We had their GM on the show that didn't go very great like that didn't last very long even. Um, so, you know, Zynga is kind of out of the game there.

That was another example. Not that long ago. A couple years ago where a big studio was taking a bet with web three. We thought it was like a, you know, the dawn of a new era, et cetera, didn't pay out. There's been a lot of false dawns. Essentially. Next on Konami Bandai Namco. I think all of these guys have to a certain degree experiments with web three.

What are you seeing? Do you see that there, even if they're not triple A bets, right? Even if they're like much smaller kind of under the radar experiments, will the largest studios. Put web three back on the roadmap or continue to invest in it in even a small fashion. Or do you see them going back retrenching given the challenges that the gaming industry more broadly has had?

 Retrenching back to what they know best which is just yeah ip and franchises mostly

Devin: I think if you look at mobile development over time like since the you know release of the app store It follows a similar path where you had triple a's trying to throw the hat the ring You remember when he was porting over their games trying to charge 20 bucks for them and this was happening Think of all the studios that have built up success in mobile didn't start in triple a they started in mobile Like they built up in that space that expertise and that knowledge and that risk that they took, you know You talk about the old angry birds like Rovio.

Obviously, that wasn't Rovio's first game, but they weren't exactly like triple a activision You Lizard kind of thing at the time, like there was like the 35th game. They just kept taking small swings and, you know, like from the early, like, I think Java game days on phones. And that's, that's what we need is people who are experienced developers in the sense that they know how to develop games, but they're not big studios in the sense that they have huge risk attached so they can take those risks.

They can make 35 games before they get their angry birds. And I think that's the, those are the kinds of people we start to see. Studios built on that. Like what we saw, you know, with where we have like Axie Infinity, right? With that, whether that company sticks around or not, they built themselves on the backs of that sort of being their angry birds.

And so I think we, I see a similar thing where it's like, I'd love to say, you know, Blizzard could come in or something and just dominate it like they try and do with many of their, their sort of spaces where they come in late, but I don't think that's likely, I think we see our small companies that ton of them fail.

Because, but you know, being lower risk, they can do that. And then some succeed. And then eventually when people see the formula, when people see this is, this is the business model that works, they come in, but there's no reason for them to do that now, as much as I would like them to, it's just like, let other people sort of find the gold before you start trying to really like do that Oregon trail out West.

It's just, you're going to die of dysentery way too often on the way.

Niko: Oh, yes. Good old pioneer trail there. Okay, so that brings us nicely to off the grid, right? That's just the title that you mentioned. It's a title of game seven mentioned. George talked about that and the game seven had it in the report a lot of, a lot of hats are being hung on this one game right now. Let's talk. So for our listeners who don't necessarily know what off the grid is, why don't you give kind of a, kind of a reasonably detailed description of who's made it? When was it released? Why are we talking about it? What makes it?

Good. How does it integrate web three elegantly and, and in a way that actually makes the game better, that it couldn't actually exist without the web three components. Cause that's important. A lot of people still will be like, eh, what games don't need web three. They don't need blockchain stuff. Like why?

Like we have digital currencies already. Why do they need to be on chain? Like blah, blah, blah. Right. So I want to, um, kind of get that out there into the open and talk about off the grid, why it's good and why it matters and what is it doing more importantly , to kind of push the ball forward, push technology and innovation in gameplay as well forward.

Devin: Yeah. I mean, as far as like, you know, kind of where it come from, it's, there's been a push for a while to try and like really step up battle Royale games, try and push extraction shooters and things like that in the, in sort of the marketplace and a lot of them just haven't really worked out. And this was more like, you know, it was attached to Neil Blomkamp, who's in, you know, well known for district nine and a whole bunch of other movies that ironically also didn't.

Yeah. End up great bets as much as I love every single one of his movies. He also does a lot of really interesting stuff. He's willing to push technology forward So he was like, you know kind of like a maybe a lower budget james cameron in that sense But not with the james cameron success, unfortunately yet But you know, it's one of those things where he was able to sort of like bring some some name attachment to it But they also had a lot of good developers developed quality stuff, you know Also, you know brought in actors like shelton copley that he's worked with, you know Many times from district nine to sort of bring like Some status, but it was, it was that they worked quietly on it with, without a lot of hype, they built it up and then they put it out there and obviously it wasn't perfect, right?

Like it's, it's a little clunky. It has some serious performance issues. I haven't tested a little while, but it was definitely not running super great. Even on my system, like there's a decent gaming PC. They had, you know, a bit of work to do, but it was definitely a playable game. They managed to get some good attention from streamers and stuff like that.

And the idea is this, this, this battle royale extraction shooter, mixed with some narrative elements, try to kind of hit a lot of bases. Hopefully not too many, but it's a quality game. And I think that's the important thing. It's like, it doesn't have to be perfect, but this is a game that's not a rug pull.

This is a quality game. Like it's, it's a fun game. It may not be everyone's cup of tea. Honestly. I. to find a straight forward battle royale that it sticks to me, but it's still a super fun game, super cool aesthetic, the way they do it and the blockchain element. They, they're trying to find that, that sort of middle ground where it's like optional, but cool around item trading and sort of this ability to sort of earn this currency and uh, and crafting and things like that.

And so they're, they're trying to attach like interesting elements to it without making it feel like you're just getting screwed if you don't participate in it, but that like it's. Exciting and worth participating in the tricky part will be like, you know, they're trying to push for console release as well.

This is meant to be like a normal triple a game just some early access. They pushed big through through epic game store, which of course as we know is very friendly to it as opposed to , Steam, which we'll see if they've managed to get like a steam release to go with that You know when they start to get closer to full release, but the fact that they came out Without not a bunch of hype, but an actual game that was playable.

That was good. That's what got people excited Like that they dropped it reminds me of like apex legends with that drop It wasn't like a bunch of hype leading up to it it was just like Suddenly it was the weekend and everyone was playing apex legends. You're like, what the hell does this even come from?

Niko: I actually remember that quite well. I was like, what the hell i've never heard of apex legends Suddenly everyone's playing this damn thing. So it was the same thing, right?

Devin: They obviously got streamers and things like that to play it and like sort of put it out there But I think that's what excited people that was a delivery of something as opposed to just a promise

Niko: Yeah, now bringing up apex legends as a comp here, that's a tough comp to follow because as good as off the grid is, I would venture a bet that, you know, probably a good, certainly more than half of our listeners probably haven't even heard of off the grid, even though our listeners are primarily, you know, gaming industry professionals and executives and, you know, folks who work in the space and follow the space very closely.

Is that a fair comparison? Or is this like, Hey, yeah, this is not Apex Legends yet. But this is like, this is the first step towards establishing real credibility with the Web three game. I think part of the reason I asked that question, I might as well come out and be open about it. It's not that they're hiding the Web three elements, but they're also not like pushing them either.

Right? And I have mixed feelings about that. And I've had mixed feelings about pushing web three components for a long time. Like, okay, on the one hand, it's a game like you don't need to talk about, like whether it runs on AWS or, you know, it's on unreal or it's on unity. Well, like nobody cares about that stuff like this care.

It's a good game. On the other hand, the web three components theoretically, supposedly on paper. Are things that set it apart, you know, item ownership, tradeability, um, you know, all kinds of like tokenized economies, things that are theoretically interesting and have been theoretically interesting to game developers for a long time.

But if you're, if you're afraid to say like, Hey, this is a web three game, like here's this cool thing. And, and to your point, like off the grid has made it kind of optional. It's like, not, you don't have to. Engage with this. I don't know. Can you walk that fence? Can you walk that tight rope without falling off on one side?

Like, I don't know if that's yet proven. And I don't know if off the grid has actually, they've proven they can make a quality game. That's cool and interesting. That has web three elements, but is it actually a better game for it? I think that's the big question. So. Do you have to come down on one side of the argument?

Devin: But here's the problem, right? Unless you're making game about trading things, you can't make it the centerpiece. And that's the problem is like web three is not like a game feature so much that like it's a technology that it should be transparent to some extent, right? It should be something that you're, you're not excited to see a wallet prompt.

No one's like, I can't wait to authorize this wallet transaction. That's not exciting. That's not fun. That's not a game.  if you build a game around that, okay, yeah, there's plenty of financializing like, you know, defi kingdoms and stuff, that's where it's just like financial transactions made it to a game.

And you can do the same thing with market trading and things like that, that that's cool. But like, it is funny the parallel here when we're talking about like, a game that's like trying to just be a successful game. We're talking about Apex legends. Think about the games that were just before.

Apex Legends that were amazing. Titan Fall one and two fantastic games just fell on their face. Just pure market timing. Like, it doesn't matter how good your game is. There's so many factors at play. You just have to hope and pray and try and do everything you can to get that game to be successful. Apex legends could have easily flopped just the same.

It could have been there like third kind of semi flop in a row, but it just happened to hit and they've, they've even struggled with the mobile version, things like that. It's not been perfect either. It's a hard, hard market. And if you throw web three in everyone's face. You almost kind of like, there's a big anchor around your neck at that point.

You're, you're pretty much guaranteeing turn off so much of your market that it's, it sucks, but it's, that's the nature of early web three games. It's, and that's the problem I've always had is like, you want to make web three important enough to matter, but you want to make it optional enough. No one cares.

Like it's this weird, like you said, this is weird thing to thread because you don't want the web two people mad because that's who you're trying to appeal to, but you don't want the web three people to not care because that's also who you're trying to appeal to. And you're not necessarily going to find a bridge.

It's, it reminds me of mobile and, and, and PC game players. Like they just scoff at each other all day long. Like it's so hard to find a middle ground until like, you know, you get these like really good, like Chinese games, like get you an impact stuff. They're like high quality games. But even then, like, it's so hard to bridge those two audiences sometimes that they're just different.

And maybe we can't find a bridge. Maybe like the web three people play web three games and the, you know, the web two people, web two games. But I think the only way that's going to work is if you just build a really good game and attach. Optional, interesting web three to it that goes, here's one uses a web three that we think is cool.

If you disagree, well, don't use it. That doesn't necessarily mean that makes the game more or less successful. If they push it more, that's almost guaranteed to make it less successful. As much as I would love to see it front and center, especially trying to put it on the console. I think at this point, if they can just make a successful game that has optional web three, like that's a huge step forward because we don't have that right now.

Niko: Mm. All right. Yeah, I vacillate between, between being a Web3 Optimist evangelist, I, you know, I wanted to work, I worked in Web3 for years and, you know, still follow it very closely.

Devin: You're still early, Niko.

Niko: I was still early. I know. And I, and I keep hearing that as well. And then on the, on the flip side, I'm just like, boy, like at what point, you know, do you start to live through that?

You know, the old saying of, you know, madness is, you know, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Right? Yeah, we're early at the same time. A lot of experiments have been have been made and not any fade off. Maybe I'm on a slightly more of a downer day today than one of their days.

All right, but let's talk about something that will hopefully get us excited and I'm very excited about this and this is like I don't this is one of those wild cards that comes out of nowhere and You know, you need those kinds of things sometimes and sometimes It's that those are the things that spark right that they're the catalyst and that is telegram.

Um, that that we've had a couple of episodes actually, where we've talked to some developers who are working on that folks who follow it. George from game seven. He also flagged it as something that was interesting. You fly into something that was a big highlight from 2024 and absolutely for me was the big highlight of 2024.

It wasn't about titles. It was about distribution and telegram seems like it is his Very promising, very open, new distribution platform that is mostly unregulated, unpoliced comes with its pros and cons, but it's kind of feels a little bit like early Zynga Facebook like opens its platform to developers and suddenly there's free virality, Zynga, you know, Playdom, all these other companies can build huge overnight essential player bases, , with relatively Modest titles and very small budgets, right?

Telegram feels like one of those moments. They don't come along very often, right? Like they're almost generational. And the big question here is, can telegram sustain? Is it? Oh boy, here we go, Devin. Okay, he's gonna be the spoiler here. I'm still excited about that. Okay, so why do you think telegram can't sustain that?

And for context here, folks, we've had a couple of episodes. We'll put some links in the show notes, but telegram when they opened up, we've had titles grow to tens of millions of users. Some of them, I think 100 million plus users literally overnight, like not overnight, but you know, over a matter of weeks.

And that is an opportunity that doesn't come along very often, hence exciting. Devin is shaking his head here on YouTube and implying that that may not sustain. All right, let's talk about Telegram, Devin. What do you think?

Devin: Are you still playing Facebook games today?

Niko: No. So I'm just saying there's a time limit.

Devin: I'm saying I don't know that it's necessarily over anytime soon, but I do think there's a time limit to it. There's, there's a huge cap on what you could do. With that platform, they're not going to suddenly, it's not going to be an Xbox in your hand. Suddenly. It's just, it's not that kind of platform. It is a very light kind of platform for that sort of thing.

It is a great way to sort of get people doing stuff, but you also got to keep in mind the context. You're talking about how like free and open it is. Once the guy got arrested, I think it was in France that reversed pretty quickly. There's a lot more restrictions happening, a lot more cooperation with governments.

And part of the reason for it. Telegram being so tied into crypto was that sort of not being the case people sort of like having these sort of underground networks and, and like these groups and all that stuff on telegram, that looseness, that sort of hidden away from the, you know, the dark recesses of the internet sort of thing is part of why it led to this point.

And that has seemed to reverse. So I do think that sort of puts a damper on it a little bit. But that being said, it's always one of these things where it's like. Any any opportunities like kindling for web three people because it's it's semi financialized. It's semi about games That merger of those two gets a lot of different groups excited And there's no reason not to like jump on that stuff when you can but you got to go really quickly And that's another reason why triple a Probably should kind of hang back because it's not quite It's probably not going to be hype in five years when you finally finish your game.

If you could build a triple a game on telegram, it still probably wouldn't be relevant by the time you released it. And that's I mean, it's just realistic, right? It's just like I said, you're not still playing Facebook games. It doesn't mean Facebook games weren't an important part of history and a huge thing.

At one point like I worked on games that were on Facebook, like, It was a great thing for a period of time. And it's, it's that, you know, even the consoles, they go through their generations and cycles and move their way. Like, where's the Sega console right now? There is just, this isn't one, right? It just, everything has its time.

And obviously some stick around longer than others, but the idea of a social network or distribution platform that has some sort of social relevance, I think is an exciting idea to push that forward because again, we don't have a platform for web three and, and obviously it needs to be something that's sort of internet native.

To really make that work, right? It can't be like a single player console offline kind of thing anymore. It needs to be something that's very connected, whether it be on your phone, whether it be on your computer, but it needs to be something that is very internet native and it's probably going to have to go after maybe younger audiences, um, that are excited about that sort of thing.

Like the older audiences, you know, often just scoff and, you know, play elder ring. Two or something like and not really care. Right?

Niko: So I still play on my game boy. Okay, I still have game boy.

Devin: Do it man. Like I still got my virtual boy over here I'll rep the thing forever, but it obviously has limited time and that's okay Like that's what money's for is to kind of boost it while it can work like jump on it while you can And then you know when it's dead is dead, but just don't be late to the party is all i'm saying It's musical chairs at times

Niko: Oh, for sure. And, Simon, who was from a mighty bear games. Thank you. Out of Singapore. Great, great guy. Great team. They were early. They're a small nimble team, very internet native, been developing games for a long time, ready to jump on the opportunity. And even he acknowledged that despite launching literally like a month or two after the, the telegram store air quotes, like it's not really a store, but like the, you know, telegram kind of opened up to developers, he was already feeling like he was a bit late to the party.

Like, which is wild to think that that was somebody who was truly there, like almost at the opening of the doors,

Devin: Just get shorter and shorter, man.

Niko: It gets so short. Yeah, exactly. It's wild. But I think that the reason, I think part of the reason a telegram to me still remains interesting is whether or not it becomes an actual platform itself for games.

I doubt that also. I don't think it's going to necessarily sustain. I don't think it's going to, um, Allow for kind of a big mass market adoption because like, who's using telegram like heavily? It was kind of crypto native, you know, young men international. Yes, there's a big black market, gray market element to that as well.

 But it's, it is a way of distributing on mobile in a way that, you know, iOS and, and, uh, you know, Apple and Google don't really let you do still to this day. So that's, what's so intriguing about it to me. It's like, there is this hunger for developers and consumers. To engage in these kinds of experiences, and there's still a lot of opportunity there.

It's not really possible on mobile, not in a native way, not through the app stores. And so this is an opportunity for developers to meet the consumer where they're at, which is some percentage of them on telegram. And I just wonder, what's Is there a world in which the same way the Facebook as a platform open up to developers created big companies like Zynga, right?

Zynga no longer makes games for Facebook canvas, right? But that's where it grew up. And then it's now more of a traditional, you know, mobile game developer, right? Publisher, where am I going with this? I guess the question is, is telegram a hint at what is to come? Is there another opportunity like this to get distribution on mobile for games that necessarily don't fit naturally into the app stores, either through rules or just because your consumers aren't there, or is it, if, is it a truly a flash in the pan?

This is like, it's one of those things. There aren't any other messaging platforms or any other opportunities for multi billion consumer reach overnight like this telegram is it, and it is going to. Play out how it plays out and then it's going to be dead. So which of the two do you think is more likely?

Devin: Well, keep in mind that even when gaming died on Facebook All those people that joined Facebook for the game still a lot of them still stuck around, right? So it still was beneficial to the network And you know still people probably played as long as they could before a lot of them sunsetted I mean we had FarmVille, too We had all kinds of stuff that tried to kind of hang on for as long as it could It just took a while for it to eventually die off And it was only because mobile managed to take off to sort of take its place a lot of games ported over You It's not, I mean, we still have heyday to this day doing well, and it's still not too different from FarmVille.

And I mean, so it's just, you know, sometimes the transition, but I think the important thing is to kind of consider what you said about sort of ending around app stores, right? We, we tried to do that with HTML5. That was part of the big deal about, Oh, you know, Steve Jobs will kill Flash, but he'll also make like, you know, progressive web apps and HTML5 stuff like great on mobile.

So that like, I remember the You know, when he was still alive, trying to act like, you know, don't worry about the app store. It's just one way to get on here. Like the web stuff will be great. You could just like run it on your web browser. It'll be cool. Like we're open to everyone. And obviously that didn't turn out to be totally true, but that idea, like it's still kind of.

You know, in a lot of people's minds where they really want to find some way to make that happen. Maybe it's through Epic. Maybe they're, you know, they're the ones who are shoving it. Maybe they're not. Maybe it, maybe they even like are doing it. Like, let's say they get Fortnite back on and maybe it's comes in through some Fortnite Creative or something like that.

Where, or Roblox or something else where basically it's, it's a question of what platform it sticks to, but it's like, clearly we want to get it onto mobile. We want to get into people's hands and it's not going to come through the app store anytime soon. So it needs to come through something else.

Telegram was an end around to that. The web browser just didn't turn out to be a great way to get that in. At least, you know, as, as things have gone so far, we've definitely tried. There's been web three games, you know, you look like a league of kingdoms and stuff that was around forever as like a four X kind of game.

That was web three native that you could play on mobile. That was in the app stores. All this stuff we've kind of ignored even for a while. Like, I feel like Apple didn't even notice that they were like, people were, they were selling crypto and NFTs and stuff in the actual game that was in the app store.

But it's That's what we're looking for. It's not really about telegram Telegram had a distribution Advantage because people didn't have to go download it necessarily a lot of times. I already had it already communicated on it They could have viral sort of things go out like similar to what happened with like wechat games things like that So, you know, it may be telegram for a while.

It may be something else But it's those properties we're looking for can it get around the app store restrictions? Does it have some viral distribution channels? Is it easy for people to sort of go from one click to their Facebook? Tried that for a while with messenger, with their sort of instant gaming.

Google's tried it with their instant gaming people been trying it for a while. It's just, it's, it's hard. I mean, if they could, if they could shove it in Roblox, like you'd get it right there. Roblox kills on mobile. And I think if you could, if you could get Roblox to become a web three platform, That would, that would be it right there.

Like that would, that would win if you could do that without getting in legal trouble.

Niko: Well, I'm not holding my breath for that anytime soon. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I think that's, it's, it's interesting that I mean, distribution is the biggest problem, I think for all games, really for all products. Like if anybody has a platform on which they control consumer attention, duh, they're going to restrict that.

Right. And so that's why telegram was so unique and interesting. And I do think a moment in time, even if Pavel Durov, like who's notorious for being kind of an oddball and, but very principled, I think on his free speech. And, you know, he's obviously very wealthy. He doesn't need the money. He's not really running telegrams notoriously, incredibly lean.

They have a tiny team of like sub 20 people, I think, so they don't really have the tools for moderation, et cetera, you know, like managing a big platform. Anyway, so I think the opportunity will last for a little bit longer. It's just, yeah, I tend to agree with you. I think it's not going to sustain forever.

It'll be curious to see what happens to the developers who do get some success, who do reach some of these consumers, who do create products that are quite sticky. Like, yeah, they're bootstrapping Zynga.

Devin: They're still around, right? Exactly. Rovio is still around, even if maybe Angry Birds 2 didn't hit what they wanted.

Niko: Exactly right, but going back to what one of the things that Simon said, which I thought was quite interesting and perhaps not that surprising, is that he was very, he was, his player base was way different to what he was used to from developing games that were perhaps more for the Western markets.

Right? And so he's like, Nigeria and other parts of Africa, South East Asia, some parts of Southeast Asia, Philippines and some parts of Latin America were by far as big as, you know, Portions of user base, which again, again, not that surprising, given what we know about telegram and it's kind of global distribution of the user base.

Also much lower end devices. So some of the gameplay has to be much more primitive, much more low fidelity than what you might otherwise think is the minimum bar these days for even mobile products. So I'm curious to hear your thoughts on whether And this doesn't have to be tied directly to telegram and their user base, but what do you see happening with the distribution of web three gaming, you know, obviously famously got started with the philippines most famously associated with axie infinity and still to this day is perhaps concentrated not so much in Western markets, but more in kind of, especially Southeast Asia and, and Latin America. Your thoughts?

Devin: Absolutely. So bullish on, on Asia in general, I don't think they've given up on web three. I think they shift their priorities and things like that, but I don't think that goes away. I think they are more accepting of it than the West will be.

The West is kind of a fair weather fan when it comes to web three, which is totally understandable. We, we, we tend to be like that a lot with a lot of different things, especially technologies and that's fine. Like, you know, like when it comes in and it, Does really well Silicon Valley jumps on it and money thrown at it and VCs everywhere.

And that works for, you know, sort of fueling it, but I think Asia markets are willing to take their time a bit more and sort of build it up where in Asia that ends up like, I know it's a broad area and I use that term because it's hard to say where it will kick off. Like I said with South Korea earlier, big question mark, despite the fact that they've been one of the biggest developers in web three, Japan is just slow when it comes to it because they're very careful about their adoption.

They're trying to build it up. They're trying to figure out kind of what. It works for what what to do with it, which is fine. Like that's that's their prerogative to do So they've just been very accepting of it in a lot of ways And so I think we still see it slowly build up over there Like maybe maybe we just don't get a lot of exciting things over here Maybe we just have to pay attention to there.

Maybe we all have to learn how to speak one of the Asian languages and Deal with like the, you know, we used to have to import games sometimes to get the, really the good stuff. And that's okay. It's, it's unfortunate for like a global distribution technology to not really be truly globally distributed, especially through language barriers and sort of geolocation stuff and regulations, as you said, despite the fact that it's a, you know, global thing, regulation, local regulation definitely matters, just ask South Korea specifically, that's okay.

Like it's just going to be one of those things where like, it'll be. Wonky over time. Right. And, and that's fine. I think we should focus on those things. And it's like, you know, you talk about like the lower end phones and the lower expectations and like telegram games, maybe being kind of simple, casual games still exist, hyper casual is mostly just morphed into casual, but like the, the, the gameplay hasn't really changed much.

The animations might look nicer, gameplay is still like the kind of thing you could have been easily playing on your game boy, you could have been playing on your Nokia candy bar phone. Like it just would have been in little blocks instead of nice, like sprites. It's just, that's how it is. And that's fine.

Like that, that's why I find it funny when people call markets dead and they're like, I have to remind them arcades are still around. I just went and played arcades the other day. I play arcades all the time. I have arcades here at home. Like, it didn't die. It just, the market shifted. And I think, you know, like the re you talk about the Game Boy, the Virtual Boy, there's a whole retro market that, you know, just buys and sells tons of stuff.

Nintendo still continues to, through the Virtual Console or Nintendo Online, monetize their old content. So I don't expect like, it just died. I think telegram could, you could easily continue to do push games through the rest of 2025. It's just, is it a hype thing? Obviously these guys are going very quickly.

And so like, does the hype die down quick? Probably just because that's kind of the nature of this, like this market, every market now, like just everything accelerates. And that's, it's just being a realistic perspective about it. It's not pessimistic. It's just like, cool. Let's just adapt to that. Let's go.

That's fine. Then it does that. Let's look to the next thing and let's keep moving as Simon's trying to do. For example, shout out to Simon.

Niko: Alright, well, that's an optimistic thought there. I think that, the life goes on, I think is the, the, the general consensus here.

Devin: Stick around.

Niko: stick around, you'll be fine. You'll be fine, okay. Well, we're coming up to time. So onto the final question here, final question on, on predictions really. So what are your hopes and predictions for 2025? You know, just like in a nutshell, like, okay, what do you think is going to happen? What do you hope is going to happen?

Devin: I mean, I think realistically we get some push forward and regulation that I think makes a difference in maybe not huge investment, but that we actually start to see some pushes and hopefully some push from the Epic side onto iOS.

If that happens, I think that could be a big deal, but I think we also, you know, get a wildcard. There's always a wildcard every year. Like Telegram, maybe it was the wildcard last year, but like, there's, there's going to be wildcard. You just don't know what it is. It's like, it's saying like black swans are rare, but not like, yeah.

A particular black swan is very rare, but black swans themselves are super common or like a rare disease. Everyone has a seemingly a rare disease, just a different one. And so it's that kind of thing where you just got to expect that there will be some totally random stuff. But I do think the most important prediction is that continues to push forward.

We will make progress. We will be in a different place at the end of 2025 than we were the end of 2024. It will be pushed forward. It will be more distributed. There will be more people participating in web three. I think that's inevitable. I don't think it There's any chance because you can't even just legislate it out to kill it because people could just get in secret networks and do it Like I don't think it dies and I think that's the important prediction Is it marches forward and whether you're marching with it or just waiting for it to get to his destination You know pick your battles

Niko: Yeah, any big titles you think you're looking forward to coming out?

Devin: Coming here, you know, I feel like maybe we get like an off the grid kind of one where it's just kind of I mean I knew about off the grid and I think a lot of people did but like it was one of those ones that kind of Comes out of nowhere I don't think any of the titles that we know about Are likely to make a big hit like I think even shrapnel kind of had to like make some serious pivots we saw that even with like alluvium had to kind of scale back like I don't think we see star atlas suddenly come out I mean, I don't think we even see star citizen ever come out, but it's just You I, I don't think we see anything like really like that, but we might see something that comes out of nowhere and becomes like a really big hit.

I just don't think anything that I've seen necessarily shows that kind of potential. But I think I think if you were to ask a whole bunch of VCs off the record, you'd probably find that there is stuff bubbling under the surface that they're making bets on that. It is really exciting. Just no one knows about yet.

And I'm not saying it because I know that, but I do know VCs and I do know that that happens a lot. So I would expect that that will be the case. Some VC back game. That's maybe double a Okay. That's really that's really cool and innovative in some way makes a big splash. Maybe it's short. Maybe it's not but I expect that.

I just don't know what it will be.

Niko: Yep. And what about a final thought on this upcoming year? What about the studios that raised huge rounds of funding? You know, we've got Gabe at the limit break. You mentioned Star Atlas. You know, there's a Mark Otero. What's his studio called out a second?

Devin: Yeah, that's, yeah, that's your, like, I could practically walk there.

Niko: Yeah, there you go. Like all these guys have raised the ungodly sums of money. And yes, they were very ambitious projects. And so we would expect them to take time to build, but 2025 feels like that's kind of the window where some, you know, you'd expect something from most of these, if not all of them.

What are your thoughts on some of those mega rounds that were raised during happier times, during more frothy times that are very ambitious projects that have you not yet launched?

Devin: I think we did see delivery in 2024. Maybe there was noise at what we hoped for. We saw it. We did see Guild of Guardians after some pivots finally come out.

We are seeing Shardbound get towards that. Like we did see off the grid finally push something out. Maybe it's not complete. Maybe it's early access kind of thing this year. Maybe we don't get a full release, but I think we actually saw a good number of games actually come to fruition. That being said, like, I don't see anything that close to it right now.

Like we even need to wait for off the grid to really finally hit like a, a full release kind of thing. It's, it's going to take a while. I don't know. I do the, the one I'm really, really hoping for though, of course, is limit breaks because that was such a big bet. It would suck to see that go undelivered and that, you know, I know people that were involved and that like pushed really hard to try and make that do really well and like I don't know what the current status is.

I don't know what's going on with it. I don't know any details personally, but I do know like people really want to push that forward and want to make it work especially Gabe. He, he certainly is trying to put his money where his mouth is because his mouth got very big, which is great. Like, I, I just wait.

I know. I think it's great. Like I, we need people like that. Absolutely. And I think, I just hope we can deliver, because I think that could be a huge deal because there was a lot of money put behind it. Maybe it's, you know, maybe it's not going to deliver, maybe it is, but I would like to see something come out because right now there's nothing public.

Right. There's not like, but he's pushed out a lot of cool tech and smart contracts and stuff like that. I would say that they've delivered pushing the tech forward, which was part of their, you know, kind of thing they're trying to do, and it's nice that they're distributing it. They're not just holding it back.

They're really kind of laying the groundwork. They're kind of placing the railroad tracks before they actually debut their train. But I would love to get a glimpse of the train at this point this year. Please God put it out. Cause I don't think, I don't think it was supposed to take this long.

Niko: That well, that's my understanding.

I mean, I know it was very ambitious, but that's my understanding too. And you know, you don't put out a super bowl ad, which I think was now what? Three years ago. Like I remember watching it. Actually, I was watching, I don't watch a lot of football, but I did. I do watch the super bowl and I remember watching it.

And I was like, ah, I know, I know who that is. So, but yeah, that's a long time ago and we haven't had any Superbowl ads from them since. So curious to, to see what they.

Devin: You never know. Superbowl hasn't happened this year yet.

Niko: Superbowl hasn't happened this year yet.

Devin: He's got something in store.

Niko: Like he might have something up his sleeve.

Maybe this is, that's the big moment. Maybe that's what we're saying. So your prediction is that we're going to see all web3 Superbowl ads this year.

Devin: That's he needs to bring, he needs to bring Arnold back to and throw him in there.

Niko: And there you go. Absolutely. Absolutely. Arnie. Okay, great. So we're at time here.

So final question for us always for our guests that I've asked you this many times, but you, you keep coming up with new, new titles, which is great, which is what are the three games that you're playing right now, or you're really excited about? And it don't have to be web three. It could just be, yeah, it's like.

Devin: Really, there's not a lot happening. Web3 to be like, yeah, I was going to say like,

Niko: So if I've, limited it to that, you'd be in trouble, but.

Devin: Yeah, yeah, I mean, I, I obviously joined the Marvel Rivals train just because like, you know, it's free and it's fun and sort of casual, but unfortunately work tends to take over and it's, it's hard.

A path of exile too was a, is a great one as well. I think that's, these are like, you know, just quality games. Like they are AAA games, but they're ones that are kind of delivering, even if path of exile too was like early access. I think these ones that are just like from good game developers. Is what i'll be playing and looking forward to throughout the year Like no doubt like it's it's just maybe we won't get as many as we'd like, I'd love to.

Niko: All right. All right. Well, that's the episode so devon Thank you so much. Um for coming on again hopping on the show. I love diving into the web3 stuff with you It's always a fun conversation. It's always a very open and honest and I love the fact that you disagree with me on So many things which is good.

But you, you know, despite like the fact that we're not always a hundred percent aligned on everything that we're predicting, you always bring a clarity of thought and, you know, experience to the space that can feel very chaotic at times. So thanks again for sharing your insights.

Devin: Thank you. I appreciate it very much. I always, always happy to be on here and I look forward to coming back here again and seeing just, just how right or wrong we were

Niko: The next time we talk. I know we need to start doing some of these like we do, we do a lot of predicting. We don't do a lot of like, let's look back and see how I don't want to report.

Devin: Card.

Niko: No, I know. And I feel like the report card would not necessarily be that kind to us.

Devin: I've been too, too optimistic at the past. Let's say the report card probably would not reflect well in that aspect.

Niko: There you go. Okay. But, also thank you to everyone for listening as always. Thanks for tuning in.

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