Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign gaming is also going through a lot of transitions and stories on its own, and I think this is another wave of Web3 gaming coming up. And I think Talent Universe and Fallen Survivors. I played it, trust me, you guys should try it once also.
It's gonna. This is one of the signs of how Web3 Gaming will change.
[00:00:30] Speaker B: Any Roguelite. All of the games we're working with are roguelites essentially, and we're just converting them into a slightly different format from what their first party games look like. So all of the studios already have their first party games on Steam and we just taken a subset of their game systems and mechanics and building a smaller mini game to launch on Total Universe platform.
So what Web3 games should really do, in my opinion, right, and what. And the direction into which we are going is just have them similar edges to get from trading meme coins, but just with the better user experience.
[00:01:17] Speaker A: Everyone, welcome to this evening's Twitter space and thanks for joining in the gamers united with Blockus and Toland Universe. I am Connie Yoon. I'm the head of gaming for Blockus and I'll be hosting the space this evening. And since it's my first time hosting the team Twitter space, I'll give you to give a quick intro about myself. I'm a game designer from Korea and I previously worked on two MMORPGs at Nexon and I worked on a shooter at a startup before I joined Blockus about a year and a half ago. And also this evening we have a great guest. Michael, the founder and CEO of Fortal Studios, the developer of the Talent Universe.
[00:01:59] Speaker B: What's up, guys? Thank you for having me. We just launched our second season literally an hour ago, so we just finished our own community call. We had. We had a fun time playing there with the guys and I jumped right after it. Our mission is simple. If you open my profile here and zoom into my head, it says, make crypto fun again. That's all we do in Toland.
[00:02:18] Speaker A: Thank you. We recently got it off on a good discussion talking about the Talent Universe and the game designs and the multiple games that Portal Studios will be launching in the next months, coming months, and the current game that's already on service.
So to start about today's Twitter space, could you give us a brief introduction about the whole portal and universe as a narrative and saga?
[00:02:46] Speaker B: Absolutely, man. So we started as just a game company. We were building this game called Talent Worlds.
We initially wanted to build an mmo, but then we moved into more of a Roguelite direction. We launched Demo a couple of years ago got a lot of traction. It became the first Web3 game that was featured at OTK Games Expo. Able to build a team around that, we got pretty good brand recognition in the space, attracted a lot of good talent.
One of my colleagues built the first Resident Evil and was head of mobile at Bandai Namco.
We have several founders who exited their main companies that joined us after it and we currently have 11 people team been building this for about four years now and shifted from just building our own first party games into this vision of the platform where want to build Roblox. But for Degens we were always in web3. We always wanted to serve this audience properly. We've seen a lot of companies that came and left into the space and from the space and we have a lot of experience observing and building in the Web3 gaming space. And right now I think what we're building with Talon Universe and several products that we have either live like we have Talent Survivors live right now, as I said, Season 2 launched an hour ago or in the pipeline. I think they will be serving this audience very well.
So that's what we're here for. We also signed several agreements with third party game developers to build their own minigames on our platform.
So yeah, no, it's going to be super exciting year. You're going to hear a lot more about us in the coming months.
[00:04:36] Speaker A: So I guess Talent Universe is just not just a simple game but it is a full IP and a saga that is continuing to evolve into a broader intellectual property. And I saw on the website and the platform about multiple games including the Tallen Survivors. Could you get into a little bit deeper, dive into what kind of game the Tall and Survivors is right now and then what are the future labels that's coming up?
[00:05:03] Speaker B: Absolutely. Tall and Survivors is one of our first party titles. So Season two that just launched an hour ago, it's only based on Tall and Survivors.
We took Vampire Survivors, one of our favorite games as the foundation, combined it with Hades and a little bit of souls like components and put it together into Talent Survivors.
Anybody who wants to try it, you can go to Toland IO and play it for free. I also pinned the announcement post here in the Twitter space in the X space. Sorry. Yeah, so you can go and give it a try for yourself.
You can play it for free. If you want to participate in season, you can either win Gold Pass by playing D by participating in daily tournaments or you can buy it for $5 from the store.
We will be also giving 10 gold passes to people who will write the most interesting questions here in the chat.
There's a chat, right? I haven't been on Xspaces for a while now. Is there a chat here? Can people actually write question?
[00:06:11] Speaker A: We also have a twitch on our Twitter. We get the replies back.
[00:06:14] Speaker B: So reply. Okay. Nice. Yeah. So whoever wants to ask question, just ask it there and we're gonna select 10 best questions and we're gonna give you a goal pass so you can play in our second season.
[00:06:24] Speaker A: All right. Goal pass. That's so I think everybody's gonna be locked in a little bit more. I actually tried playing the Tallinn Survivors myself with a practice match before the season two started. I really like the roguelike design and the two DNA adventuresque combat.
[00:06:40] Speaker B: Nice. Appreciate it.
[00:06:41] Speaker A: Yes. And it gave. I I usually like playing Rog like games which is a very quick time loop play. I I played a lot of Archero a few years back and I still play Archero 2. So roguelike is a genre that's currently keep evolving. And to talk about the video game design of the Cullen survivors, what was the decision factor of going browser and mobile platform and how that could actually make the roguelike players be more engaged into the game itself?
[00:07:15] Speaker B: Well, transparently I think that pretty much all the roguelike players just play games on Steam. So being on browser wasn't really a strategic decision for us, but rather a necessity. I think we're serving Degen Web3 audience first and all of them are on the browser.
Our goal is to, well, as I said, build Roblox for Degens. But certain games like Tolan Survivors, we see it evolving into a standalone title that will become a premium game on Steam. And we want games to start on our platform to be able to validate their core loops and then grow and basically graduate into standalone titles that can launch on prominent gaming platforms like Steam, PlayStation and others similar that what's happening with Roblox itself as well. A lot of games are starting there to validate the core loop and then once they were able to prove it, they expanded into standalone title and launch it on Steam for example.
[00:08:09] Speaker A: Got it. Yes. A lot of Web3 games are recently launching on the browser because of that for the accessibility to.
[00:08:16] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:08:18] Speaker A: And the seamless ux. But do you also see in the future that once it's ported onto the Steam or the PC or mobile app, do you think more how do you plan to provide more seamless UX in terms of launching other route apps or applications?
[00:08:36] Speaker B: I mean we definitely want to expand to Mobile, I think a lot of players in our segment, so web three, casual DJ audience. Right.
They're primarily using browser. So web browser and PC and then mobile. Those are two platforms we're currently looking at with, with all of our experiences. And again, once games graduate they would launch on PlayStation and PC. But our core audience, our target audience was our primary platform and games that launch on our platform are just web and mobile.
[00:09:07] Speaker A: Got it. Yes. I guess it's already season two for Toland survivors and it's already dozens of players are coming in to play the video game. To recap a little bit on the season one, what was, what do you think is the biggest highlight of the season one? Were there any like surprise successes or unexpected challenges during the development and service of the season one?
[00:09:30] Speaker B: I mean there are always challenges in game development. Our engineers are barely sleeping. We don't really haven't taken a proper weekend in months. I would say our last proper break was back in December last year to be completely honest with you. So they're always challenging. It's unpredictable space and you never know what's going to happen.
But we were lucky to be able to validate our core game loop and some core monetization features as well in season one. We doubled down and expanded on them for season two. But season one just proved that our game is fun. People like to play it. People like to spend money in the way that we design our monetization system and they also like the ability to earn because 70% of all the in game purchases in season two, all 70% of all of the crown purchases crowned in our in game currency go back into the prize pool that players are competing for. So basically it allows us to share a lot of value back with players and especially top performers and it allows us to build and develop the game and get a lot of players to play test it and give us feedback on early stages like what we're doing right now.
[00:10:44] Speaker A: I guess you've been building the whole game with the players from the get go with the start of this project?
[00:10:50] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:10:51] Speaker A: What were the fun like do you have any fun episodes or like any kind of dramatic situation when you were play testing the video game for the first time with the players or the community.
[00:11:02] Speaker B: So wait, so your, your question is is if we had any dramatic situations?
[00:11:06] Speaker A: Yes, because you know like there's always weird bugs that's popping up all the time when you play this, the game that's really unexpected.
[00:11:14] Speaker B: So I guess, I guess I want to tell a little bit different story here which is Kind of related but not really in the same time. One of the first time like we were able to have a proper playtest of the game with people IRL. It was in Denver, it was Denver 2023 and we had a booth so they, they gave us a booth for free but they didn't really give us much of the equipment and stuff so we had to. I basically they gave us a table and one computer. I started going around the venue. We didn't have any money to buy computers or in random or something.
I moved into the US in 2022 with $500 as a refugee from Ukraine. So it was already a miracle that we got to east Denver and now we're here having our own booth. It was a crazy time.
So I was able to go around the venue and find different kind of items that I was able to build the booth out of. So we ended up having like five or six different computers arcade machine and we were play testing the game. We had line of people who wanted to play it. It was such a rewarding experience. But so in the end of this whole thing we were like okay, but like power because we didn't really even have money. Well we had money for the ticket back from Denver but we didn't have a place to stay. We were going to San Francisco after that but we didn't have a place to stay here. And on the final day, Jess from Blokus actually approached us and she was like oh, you know, like we just got into a 16z crypto startup school and we're going to be doing this thing in Los Angeles. You should come stay with us for a little bit. And so thanks to her we were able to actually like not be homeless right after this. So we are like Blokus actually. Like we like, we have a shared history together. You guys were the reason we, we were, you were part of the journey that we had on the way to where we are at right now. So yeah, it's, I think it's pretty meaningful to. For us to be sharing this this year and yeah, I'm super excited to work together with you guys in the long run.
[00:13:19] Speaker A: That is a great episode to share and well, every start has its own difficulties. But what you went through, Michael, is one of very not conventional, very interesting.
[00:13:32] Speaker B: Right.
[00:13:32] Speaker A: But that just turned out to be great now, right now because you just completed the season one and now you're heading into season two with thousands of players cheering for you. So that's really, that's just great to see and I guess you And Jess go back for a long time, and then the fact that you guys stayed as friends, and then now that we are holding a Twitter space all together.
[00:13:54] Speaker C: Just jumping in here.
[00:13:55] Speaker A: Yeah, that.
[00:13:55] Speaker C: That day was crazy. Hey. Hey.
[00:13:59] Speaker A: Your end of the story, Jess.
[00:14:01] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, I remember. He just. He just came and he was in la and I was like, yo, dude, like, what's up? Let's get a coffee. We got a coffee.
[00:14:08] Speaker B: And no, no, but I was in debt. Remember, it was back in Denver, because our booth in Denver, you were like. We were like, we don't have a place to stay anywhere. You were like, oh, you. You don't want. You want to come to la to us. And so we came to LA because of that.
[00:14:19] Speaker C: Yeah, I remember. I remember, like, I just saw you and you're like. I was like, where are you gonna be after? You're like, I don't know. I'm like, why don't you just come to la? You're making games. Just fucking go to la, dude. And you're like. And then you're like, okay. And then you came to LA and say, okay, this guy operates at my speed. Like, I like this.
And then you came to. And then you came to la. And then we were just like, okay, let's go to la. I, like, brought you guys into the accubator office and then got kicked out of there. Yeah, I know, but before you left, I gave you a bunch of, like, stuff. Stationaries. I bet they hate that. But I was like.
[00:14:59] Speaker B: What a good time.
[00:15:00] Speaker C: Seriously.
[00:15:00] Speaker A: I think Jess has a series of habits of picking up friends and employees or fellow game developers on the street, because. Give us share about the story. I met Jess during New York Tech Week. And. Okay, just. Yeah, we just.
We just connected through when I was working on a video game called Society, and then we just decided to have a coffee chain in the middle of the street in New York. And then about a few months or maybe a year later, I joined their team as the head of gaming. So nice.
This is, I guess, like a repeated pattern from Jess. Jess, do you have anything to say about this?
[00:15:43] Speaker C: That was some Genesis tales about blockas. It was so early. I was like, I. That was within a year. That was. So I started the company and when the market was already going down in 2022, I had the idea. And then when I was raising at first FTX wasn't going to make and Salana was just dropping, like, there's no tomorrow. And then FTX went down. I was like, holy. Like, why am I in crypto Right. And then like I got the round together. So when. When I saw both Gunny and Michael, both of you, that was within one year of starting the company. So I was like, what the am I doing? Like, I'm gonna just go to these conferences and walk around and anybody who says that they're in gaming, we're just gonna be best friends.
[00:16:33] Speaker B: Turn out to be a plan.
[00:16:35] Speaker C: Those are things. Not anymore. Not anymore. We graduated from that. We have an interview process.
But yeah, those were the times.
[00:16:44] Speaker B: What a time to be Alive and in Web3 Gaming.
[00:16:47] Speaker A: Yes, Web3 Gaming is also going through a lot of transitions and stories on its own. And I think this is another wave of Web3 gaming coming up. And I think Talent Universe and Talent survives. I played it. Trust me, you guys should try it once also.
It's gonna. This is one of the signs of how Web3 Gaming will change because we started off with a lot of mini games, but now the games that are coming up on the web 3 Gaming is not just casual games. It's very well made, detailed games, even when it comes to a casual game. So I think you guys are running on the. As a, you know, spear edge on driving this transition and to talk about this transition and future that you guys are drawing forward. So do you want to share about your roadmap for the next six to 12 months?
[00:17:41] Speaker B: For sure. Yeah. We got to have another game that we're launching on a pretty popular chain right now.
It's going to come out within a couple of months. I would say like within two months. We should have something public already and we're building this with partnership with pretty big company in the space as well. That's one thing. We have a couple of partnerships as well that we lined up for Talent Survivors and Talent Universe in general.
And we're starting development of other third party games that will launch Intelligent Universe with our partners. So just more games, more platform features as well. Like we added Mission System this season. We're adding more quests. We added the new tab in the store. We added Gacha as well in this season, which is fun. Everybody likes Gacha. So just the expansion and more and more content. More, more ways to have fun.
[00:18:34] Speaker A: And then are there any other genres of talent game you guys are working on or is it just going to be the continuum of the service of Talent Survivors for the moment, there are.
[00:18:46] Speaker B: A bunch of different genres that all revolve around Roguelites.
So it's going to be Roblox for Roguelites and for Deepens at The same time any roguelite. All of the games we're working with are roguelites essentially and we're just converting them into a slightly different format from what their first party games look like. So all of the studios already have their first party games on Steam and we just taken a subset of their game systems and mechanics and building a smaller mini game to launch on Total Universe platform.
[00:19:15] Speaker A: Right. So do you also evolve this genre into getting into combined game Design with Action RPGs or MMORPGs?
[00:19:23] Speaker B: Oh yeah, absolutely. Definitely Action RPGs. It's all in Worlds and other or first party title. When it comes out, it's going to be something between Hades, Diablo and this is it. Yeah, just Hades and Diablo. So definitely action RPGs with heavy roguelites. Incline.
[00:19:42] Speaker A: Do you also see this genre evolving as a multiplayer experience as well, such as PvP arena or even 3 on 3 multiplayer online battle arena?
[00:19:53] Speaker B: We're more looking at co op experiences up to up to four players together.
We thought about PPVP and we constantly think about that, but we just don't see it as a fit in the next six months, at least for experiences that we're currently building. There's a lot of indirect competition, their leaderboards and stuff. But PvP we just know. We just don't see it as a good fit for now.
[00:20:18] Speaker A: Gotcha. Gotcha. So I think co op experience would also be very interesting when it's combined with the roguelike game design. So like, let's say every session will have a different skill set or items to choose from as a co op experience. So every single battle session will look different with four players together.
Is that the path you guys are taking?
[00:20:42] Speaker B: Absolutely, yeah. The. Hence the roguelike genre.
[00:20:45] Speaker A: Gotcha, gotcha. And why do you also, you know, to. To talk about the general Web three gaming industries a little bit. Where do you think the web3 gaming is headed and how do you think it's going to evolve in the Next, let's say 12 to 24 months?
[00:21:03] Speaker B: Very good question. I see Web3 Gaming evolving towards kind of. There are so many companies that shut down recently. They were on the fence between web 2 and web 3 for a longer period of time by trying to serve both audiences. They kind of serve nobody because what web3 casual dgen audience. So people who play games in web3 are here for only reason is to earn money. And if they can just go and trade meme coins and earn money there, they wouldn't really be interested in web3 games. So what web3 games should really do, in my opinion.
[00:21:36] Speaker A: Right.
[00:21:37] Speaker B: And the direction into which we are going is just have them similar edges to get from trading meme coins, but just with a better user experience.
My co founder spent around five years working in Las Vegas casinos and.
[00:21:53] Speaker A: He.
[00:21:53] Speaker B: Shared an interesting observation that players tend to stick with machines that had lower odds of success but better gameplay versus machines that had better odds but lower quality of gameplay. So it's all about gameplay as long as you can earn money on a similar level to Meme comics. Right. So we see casual Degen gaming is just meme coin trading wrapped into gamified experience.
I would be curious to hear Jess take on this as well.
[00:22:21] Speaker A: Jess, you want to add it on this?
[00:22:23] Speaker C: No.
[00:22:26] Speaker B: That's hilarious.
[00:22:31] Speaker A: Got you. That is actually a very interesting angle because when we join a lot of Web3 gaming spaces, we talk about the quality of the video game, which is one of the fundamentals of developing, servicing a video game. But the angle of making the experience of collecting and trading Meme coin wrapped in a form of a video game is also a very cool take. I guess in that sense that experience also comes from your early stages of a community building.
How did that look like? And then could you also share about like that community evolved into thousands of players that you have right now?
[00:23:08] Speaker B: Well, we just wanted to give back to our community from early stages. Right. We released our Genesis NFT collection right now. If you stake your toll, it's called toll on Genesis Avatar. If you stake it during the season, 5% of the principle is being distributed to people who stake their avatars. So we like to give back. And as we increase our revenue streams, we would love to give back to them even more. And that's our main way to give back and just retain our older community members, I would say. And yeah, one of the other things we have is a referral system. If you refer somebody into Talen and they spend money in our store, you get 5% of whatever they spend for six months.
[00:23:52] Speaker A: This is it. So drawing players with reward system and through the referral system creates an organic organical distribution momentum for the taller universe. That's my understanding. I think this would also be a very interesting piece of advice that you're sharing on the next phase today. Because we are. We also have a lot of guests that are building and preparing their own Web three game development services. So I think that's. This is also a very interesting take you took on the community building and on the features of the Web3 gaming side also to discuss about how the Holland Universe Saga, the story and the narrative itself. I see that a lot of characters or factions or lore elements will be shared throughout the.
Regardless of the genre. Could you like, talk a little bit about the story itself?
[00:24:48] Speaker B: Right. So, yeah. The tall one is beyond the platform. It's also an ip. We also had our comic book a couple of years ago. There's a shared lore between first party talent games, obviously. For example, in Talent Survivors, the first season was on the sort of like a green map area, and this one goes underground. And each new map in Tall and Survivors will be taking you deeper and deeper, and you're basically descending into the mountain that was captured by the horde of orcs. And they discovered a Mycelium core inside this mountain. And in the world of Tone, Mycelium is the provider of magical powers, and orcs are harvesting those powers in this mountain and just building different kinds of power ups for themselves.
And you're playing for the faction that is trying to essentially exterminate them from this mountain. And as you could see in the first season.
Yeah. Well, in season zero, you were fighting Kartul, the orc boss on top of the mountain. And in the second season, you were fighting a lot of gnolls that are also fighting on behalf of orcs. And in this season, you went deeper to the mountain, and Cartool is back as the hardest boss in the game. If you meet him in a mountain, you're pretty much dead after one or two hits. Yeah. Your goal, as we release more content for tonal Survivors, you'll be getting deeper and deeper, and the final boss will be the Mycelium core that you will need to destroy. That's a little bit of a spoiler. I don't think we ever shared this before, but yeah, that's. That's the narrative of Toland Survivors.
And I. I could go. I could talk about this for ages. We have a lot of lore written about Toland, about Toland universe. Well, Toland World.
But yeah, let's. Let's just. Let's just stop.
[00:26:45] Speaker A: Gotcha. Gotcha.
Yeah, I guess there's a lot of mechanics and lores that you prepared to be unveiled. I guess the antagonists are, of course, the faction of orcs. And I can already kind of imagine or dream about having multiple factions and multiple player groups that you can choose from and the classes.
[00:27:06] Speaker B: Exactly. You sound like a big ARPG fan.
[00:27:10] Speaker A: Oh, yes, yes. I design MMORPG. I played MMORPGs. So MMO experience or RPG experience are my favorite.
And yeah, I just wanted to, you know, get to a little deeper dive on the lore. And I guess everyone who joined in today will be able to play the game and then understand about the lore as you experience and progress through the game. I actually got killed at level 12 three times straight. So, like my journey from level one was okay. And then once it becomes the level 12 or coming up, I get just, I get one KO, one hit KO'd. And yeah, I guess I'll have to practice on my controllability and get some more assets to, you know, progress it. But I already have a gold battle pass ready to play, so I'll scare you some screenshots when I get.
[00:28:01] Speaker B: Good luck. Good luck.
[00:28:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:03] Speaker B: And just as a reminder, we're giving, we're giving away 10 gold passes to.
To 10 people on this Twitter space.
[00:28:09] Speaker A: Yes. Not only queued in the game design, but it also serves as a proof of gameplay for a lot of players walking through the journey, because you can only unlock it through your gameplay. What was the more background stories of the gold battle passes or the business models that you guys are pushing forward?
[00:28:33] Speaker B: Well, so what we've been trying in the first and now second season is the model called Risk to earn, where basically every time you play a run, you need to use crystal that you buy with crowns that you buy with crypto. Right?
And 70% of all the crown purchases go into the price pool and 30% goes to us. And out of the 75% also goes to avatar holders that stake their altars, as I said.
And so with your crowns, you buy crystal. There's four different crystal types from 1 to 4x and those are multipliers of your scores. And there are several leaderboards that you can get to by playing seasonal modes. Each run you play in seasonal mode, you need to have at least one crystal for each run. It can be anything from 1 to 4x crystal, better crystal, obviously, bigger score, multiplier.
And so during the run itself, you need to kill bosses. Every, every next boss has random difficulties, so you never know how hard or how easy it's going to be to kill him. And if you die at any point of the run, you lose everything. And so the only way for you to actually save your points is to end run after you kill the boss or he flies from you. And then in the end of the season, the sum of your points is basically the percentage of the prize pool that you will take home. And during the whole season you will under on the left, on the left side of the screen, if you're in tall and hub, you will See your estimate prizeful distribution depending on the amount of points that you have. And in order to get placed in a leaderboard, you need to play at least 10 runs.
[00:30:18] Speaker A: So I guess even though this is not a PvP game, it's strictly a single player. But there is the async competition. Game design just attracts players to play over and over, purchase the crystals, get into the game, add the multiplier, get into the leaderboard, and then continue on competing. So what would be the ultimate prize pool when the season is over? And how do you plan to grow this into a very async tournament style video game?
[00:30:47] Speaker B: Well, in the first season it grew all the way to $7,000 where we put only 3,000 of our own. Here we started with 4,000.
Season started like one and a half hours ago. It's already 4,500.
We'll see where it's going to get.
I'm not sure and I don't really want to speculate, but when it comes to the second part of your question, how are we seeing this becoming the ultimate async competition? I mean it's kind of already is. We just now our goal is to kind of evolve from seasonal 4 format to always running live service, but with also occasional seasons where we have some special rewards on the line, but also to have some experience for players to participate in in between seasons.
[00:31:38] Speaker A: Got it, got it. And you also mentioned this growing into gen Roblox, so that that means that a lot of developers can also leverage this IP and then build their own mini games or casual games or competition games. Is there going to be like a platform wide competition model as well?
[00:31:54] Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah. There will be tools for creators to create their own experiences and to and a bunch of social and competitive features for them to just to host their own competitions. But there will be all. But there will be also obviously platform wide competitions in the format of season with just a larger scale of content and different features.
[00:32:20] Speaker A: Got it, got it. I mean the IP itself was very interesting from the standpoint of the backstory itself. And you are also opening up the full composability with this IP for your fellow Web3 game developers.
So I was quite interested in the, in a sense that the IP was very interesting, like very detailedly designed. Could you like briefly share about how the team worked on this game design and the backstory angle? Like I guess there's a lot of superstars on your team right now.
[00:32:53] Speaker B: Absolutely, yeah, we're pretty lean. So we have only 10 people in the core team and a couple of Other part time or just outsourced teams we're working with but the core team people. Yeah. So as I shared in the beginning my co founder was ex head of mobile for Bandai Namco and he was one of the devs behind First Resident Evils spent around 40 years in the game industry so he's really running the operations and live service and believe it or not but our game designer is 19 year old kid so he has a lot of innovative ideas and I think us having talent that has like 40 years under their belt in combination with like fresh out of pretty much high school talent and me I'm just 24 like this is the first and only job I ever had in my life running this company. Like us having this balance and such diversity of experiences really helps us understand and implement best practices from the industry but also stay up to date and in touch with all the modern trends and be able to catch up with them and really experiment fast and iterate. So that's, that's how, that's how we work.
[00:34:08] Speaker A: Yeah I guess there's a lot of synergy happening when, when the 40 year game veteran which is like the senpai of the gaming industry and a 19 year old ambitious game designer working as a team. So yeah and then I think you are doing a great job and keeping the whole whole team has a very cohesive pack of wolves that's just running towards developing and servicing the talent universe.
Where do you see your team growing up to in scale? Do you prefer to keep supporting spectrum of game developers coming joining your team or do you have like a certain preference when it comes to this is a guy that's very fit for web3 gaming industry?
[00:34:54] Speaker B: Yeah man. So it's good to keep diversity. It's also good to stay as lean as possible.
I think there are enough tools you can currently leverage to not hire people for many different roles.
So my goal is to stay as lean as possible and also hire people that are able to learn fast.
And I would have this conversation on our previous interview that it's not only about being open to being proven wrong because people with like 40 years experience under their belt right. They have pretty selfish views on the industry and it's pretty rare for those kind of people to have flexible mentality and be able and being open to new things.
So with us it's also a skill to actively trying to prove yourself wrong because this industry moves so fast, there's so many new things all the time and there's so much noise that you need to find signal among.
So it requires very particular mindset and not so much skills but rather an ability to learn and adapt fast. I think those are so ability to learn, being able to adapt fast as I said and just being trustworthy and reliable are main things I'm looking for in anybody who is interested to potentially join our team or in just new talents in general.
[00:36:16] Speaker A: Got it, Got it. I guess the momentum that you are driving with your whole team is just great. And the season two already price pool reaching over the 50% of the season one pricing pool just shows that the universe is the platform itself and the community as a group of gamers is just growing on a daily basis.
Since we already passed 40 minutes, we would like to dedicate a few minutes for the audience. Q and A. So I'm looking at the comments right now. If you have any just questions, just write it on the twitter and we'll be reading one by one.
Let me get a little bit help from my team on the getting answering the first questions.
[00:36:59] Speaker B: How do I see the questions? I'm not sure where to look for them.
[00:37:02] Speaker A: If you look on the thread reply side there are. There's gonna be a question that should.
[00:37:08] Speaker B: Just keep even one second. I gotta, I gotta open us or.
[00:37:11] Speaker A: I'll just show you the link. Oh, okay. So on the reply section right now there is no question but if you go to the Blockus Twitter space and check on the round day Talk with Blockus and Talon Universe thread you can leave a question. There are 10 battle passes waiting for you to claim once you write the question on the reply section.
Yeah, we finished. Thank you so much and thank you for all the audience to come to us. See you later.
[00:37:41] Speaker B: Thank you everybody.
[00:37:42] Speaker A: Yeah, see you next time. Bye.
