WAM - Crypto gaming for hypercasual players - Transcripts

this is the brave new coin crypto conversation hosted by any bigger one eighty Pickering here I'm your host and welcome to the Twitter conversation a brave new coin podcast where we talk to the people building the future and the bitcoin blockchain and cryptocurrency space hi everyone I know we're all hitting right now crypto has taken a beating and Goldman Sachs is flat lining is the best case for stock portfolios flatlining zero returns Sheesh in situations like these we can take a cue from the world's based investors because a groundbreaking instant young study last year revealed that eight and ten ultra high net worth individuals invest in alternatives however bank of America C. I. O. recommends investing and one specific high performing alternative to rescue your cash he's talking about fine art two thirds of million is already hedge against inflation without according to UBS because the last time inflation was this time out appreciated by an unprecedented thirty three point two percent annually now obviously a most folks don't exactly have tens of millions of lying around to stop buying bank season pass quits but that's we must two weeks comes on to helping people keep their cash intact by offering fractional investments and the top one percent of the art world and with the recession on the horizon they've seen sign ups increased by three hundred and twenty percent that combined with the fact that they speak to every investors to make sure that is right for them that means there's a wait list but I'm hoping you guys up with priority access to skip the line and it's as easy as going to mass two X. dot com and using the promo code crypto conversation that's mass two X. dot com from the code crypto conversation and you can see important regulation I disclosures at masterworks dot com slash seat date again that's most works dot com and use the promo code crypto compensation to skip the line and now folks it is on with the show my guest today is Daniel Thomas Daniel is the CEO and founder of wham which is a platform for high because you game is to play games in crypto socialize and have fun at the same time looks pretty cool welcome to the show Daniel

and the really really excited to be here thank you for your interest

no problem Hey it's it's exciting to have you here Daniel let's do what we do at the beginning witches I will get you to please introduce yourself I'd love to just hear a little bit about your background we are from and what you've been doing before when

okay so how much time do you have for this we were very glad to be here

I

started my gaming could be a two thousand and seven I am right now talking to you from Eastern Europe Romania we're in the middle of Transylvania where Dracula used to hang out the two centuries ago

testing

yeah started my gaming career in two thousand and seven with the first games to drag go on that we started with zero money zero knowledge digital backup we how regular families we had and we still do parents we have no investment we have no idea what that investment is and we we just started making games back then it was flash sold the ones of us that are still I mean that are old enough to remember clash with maybe this is actually a market if you remember last year old that is how we started and we made viral games for girls and the idea was that we had to publish girl games a make up and fashion and so on based on the theme that is currently trying to so pretty much the same type of casual goal today and from zero we grew that company at that point it had seventy employees we were releasing almost fifty games a month and the total number of games that we made so far surpasses eight thousand reached more than two billion users and I think three point seven billion sessions on the web when flash died we switch to HTML five and that is when my personal expertise was focused on on let's see the browser tech right in a previous companies my role was pretty dynamic in the sense that when you have nothing you have to be everything so up from the cleaning lady to the CEO CFO COO sales you name it is that so we had to do to grow the company from zero and we started educating ourselves about what start ups are what investments are so we get more knowledge into this and in two thousand sixteen after a going on with the the games to your browser game studio we launched also a mobile game studio called transit game yeah which I exited in two thousand and seventeen and that was a bust because we made the following we we saw the opportunity in the market I wasn't working when we started it but we entered the market with a flash mentality without web mentality in the Arab world and that proved to be a mistake so I had to accept that insurance and in two thousand sixteen I partnered up with my current co founder Alex back then we had on it was actually his idea and he's

there

you saw this opportunity about social media publishing background Facebook will still allowing you borrow content on Facebook so we had a very approaching business on that side we appoint we're reaching a hundred million users and remain alone among with our content

the

we started getting more and more excited about what the president can do in the sense that even though I'm very content on Facebook was lucrative we saw the challenges and the threat of that business model given that you are basically putting content content on another platform and that is that was the right call because soon after that Facebook started becoming really restricted so the idea was and we discussed amongst each other and we said okay what we know best we know games we know game technology we see this opportunity in developing a new type of product that mostly relies on browser technology to deliver better quality experiences almost on par with native apps or even better and there were certain promises that it's cheaper to build faster to build our browsers were getting stronger in terms of technical capabilities and API's opens and opens towards the I am so we said okay let's dive into this because I really love this thank

we created a platform as we know so mom I would say right now when was actually building where three gaming game publishing technology this is what we're actually offering this is what we're building an eco system based on the learnings of years past on everything that we learned doing business so we created a platform yeah question

No at nine o'clock

okay

you can keep going and then you you're doing a great job

okay so we created a platform at the beginning we did not have this web version in mind but we said okay we know how to build this we know we can give you a better user experience and we want to address the whole world not to develop markets only because it in in terms of phone capabilities when it comes to Indonesia Brazil Africa India and so on the average

the

speed the internet speed is a lot lower than in developed countries that makes the internet connection expensive for consumers to use this means they have restricted access to premium content also that premium content will have we will require even more investment from the user which makes no sense because users should be able to access content regardless of their phone capabilities of course now it's there's is short on the low end devices that their main purpose is to actually connect people not to entertain people then you will have a hard time accessing almost any type of content but we're not addressing those and we decided to build a platform we spend spend it a few times the business model we were talking with telco companies to give them as a workable product for their customers it did not work out we spend about one point five years doing that and then into two thousand nineteen are we were driving from my city to the capital don't close to Bucharest and we were discussing having a child Alex and I looked in the car let let's rethink what we're doing because it is clear that the idea is good but the current let's say you go to market strategy and what we had in mind is not working because with enterprise companies the there's a long sales cycle and there's internal policy and there's a lot of things that we did not know and we had to move because we really wanted to make this happen so we said okay we had a domain name when I look up and there's a reason why we bought the view I think a year ago or a year before that because it's a simple name is to pronounce it's a dock apps everybody was looking strange at us when we talk with the first B. C.'s windup app it's never going to work and these are people with internet experience it's like it was my going for us but isn't it was dark out because the we believe in the web app technologies and we wanted users to understand right from the back what this is about this is an app so we have one look up and we said okay let's re brand everything that we did go to the United States raise money and just continuing the product so did the branding in one night spent a whole weekend I slept for hours my wife tonight she was number one supporter here because she stayed with me alternate nights helping me stay awake read design and re cold the M. V. P. so we were ready when we left for the United States the doubles in two thousand nineteen I think October November some about and we went to the United States and we successfully you failed on that mission because we did not manage to convince anyone to invest in our crazy stop and that's not necessary that the product was bad but we had a reputation in the market and that is one lesson that we don't go somewhere where people do not know it at all because they have no reason to give you money

yes

so lesson learned we came back and in two thousand and twenty we said okay we're we're still gonna put in money so in total we'll talk tonight about fifty five hundred thousand euros in the first versions and all the trips and everything that we did what's the word that came along with the other and we spend up to two thousand and twenty gathering a bigger team brought in the first yeah mall we brought in brought the C. deal which we knew years back we worked successfully on a start up he was really experienced with at products and crypto he actually built an exchange but we set up the amount earned she was we were trying to we spend a start up and I told him look I still live a having fun building products for people you want to build something together and said look okay it's exciting hoping people but definitely I want to focus on something that can be a massive success

and

and we we yeah

it was so let's just pose the vent for a second then Daniel so you thought for those listening but the beginning to the they'll be beginning to get an idea of what women's but let's let's just explain it a bit so I'll just read a little paragraph here that you've got on the website which is when doc app and then you can expand on it but it says that when M. is a platform where people can compete in tournaments to win crypto rewards and any of TV's and you can play using your mobile phone from chrome or safari or indeed the whim app from Google or apple app stores and the GM I can uses on when can online games and tournaments right so they can create your own condiments and generate a recurring revenue which that's very interesting developers can publish their their own games they can sell in the thirties and get people can create these tournaments sorry I guess that's the idea not I get it I mean it's cool C. and then you talk about you know it's a slight and people be family without played and and you also use this term hyper casual so maybe maybe we can start with that okay what do you mean by heart the casual gamer and then took took us through the platform and untold amounts and and all that kind of stuff what is already a casual game and then you

so we decided that in order for the president to be attractive it needs to be but simple games we saw the hyper casual niche in the OnStar is growing really fast right now seventy percent of the one point five billion users that consider themselves gamers play hyper casual games I'm not these types of games in the steps of this type of content is basically simple get our simple games focused on mechanics and score not on graphics and story so this is really important because there's a very

senior in her

very short learning about how to play a game and the focus is to get the highest score as possible

these are not

games games that you play when you commute when you're old I don't sit on your toilets wait for someone have gaps in your schedule right yes and we said okay we know there are two reasons first we saw the hyper casual games in the apple store and Google play work individual games and they were in the sights of about two hundred megabytes this was insane for us coming from where we if you do a game like that on whether the special on your phone nobody will play it because it'll have a hard time loading what when it's on the flight right when you're accessing your browser so you said we know how to bill better games small games that can get consume without costing the user again I'm coming back to the target audiences in the developing countries not only but we want as much as possible open market and everybody enjoying the content so this was the first reason and second of all each game that you've downloaded from the store was basically resetting any progress that you made before have you worry second trend you reset the score you worries that you're entering each time a new environment that made it hard for you to see any progress you have a sense of pride and so we said okay let's build a platform where we give endless games and we actually give the possibility of creating games with like user generated content I'll get that in a minute I am the make it the next it in social gaming because the focus is not only playing with playing with other people and competing in tournaments competing in tournaments because playing potential games alone makes no sense for us these are competitive games on the re regarding competitiveness we saw the hyper casual games like the casualties ports so you have professional E. sports player like delta and were cracked and she has to go right these are professionals the plate ten hours a day

yep

but you also have me on you maybe that plate amateur football on Sundays or Saturdays with friends right what is that so that would be the casual football right this do you have the professional football players did you give the right analogy and you have a no amateurs the fans that played in their spare time with friends so we saw the same thing with Barbara casual games you have that you sports clear that players that focus on being professional and you also have people that just like to play but are competitive by nature and want to compete on score so we said okay we're building apart from capital gains E. sports Amitri sports where people compete in tournaments back then the concept of token was already designed but was not planned so we said okay let's have a to open in the background we we actually register the trademark before it was called top going we're going to launch the platform long long story short we raise the traditional pre seed round in twenty twenty in November from a local investor is the CEO of a big software company in Romania are listed on the stock exchange and he said okay we pitched him the idea that okay what how much money do you need to get to the next point I'm going to back you because I I just believe in your face okay so we did that the enemy launched in private well actually public bit our last year in February we've reached a point five million users in forty five days actually we reach to more users we reached about eleven million users but because the rock a lot and we started to try acting attention from the season just being in a market that is when we got the first nomination to the best innovation category I'd mobile games awards and during the summer last year we started getting feedback from what was for me what is looking like it's going to be a permanent and people around asking why cannot come to use tokens how can we get it opens out plus you were seen with blue craziness was happening with Maxime Trinity and we also have the in house expertise I was involved and several small group go browsing projects at the point we tried out the monitor what's called when I reminded in the browser if you remember the the standard

the

blood was into this so our CTO into crypto so we actively started exporting more and more and this is where our head of crypto to date back then he wasn't we we knew each other for quite a few years he was a part of what sort of game and I've been into before five six years his an evangelist and said you guys should be in crypto because first of all people of the stops and you'd find way more more investors than in traditional business because these guys understand what you guys are doing so we decided to jump into crypto fully and it was a ride since then we launched our open in December decided to call it wow I'm so we took out the pack when naming to have a clear branding everything we raised a twenty million dollars and December which we used to last a talker and make partnerships develop the blood from recruit and all that stuff

and so the token has cooled when yes and so there is some what's the idea the token people get uses can numb can they can generate revenue using using that token and they can bind so in this case is that right

so first of all it is a concept that we really want to make clear the concept concept itself plate to burn it is a bit flawed in our opinion given that the the purpose of playing is not Ernie and if you just play to burn the apt that you do this on this just a banking up with graphics and coming from gaming we would focus more on giving the right experience users that want to be there because of the fun of course the token and technology supports this new type of business and this new opportunity basically in the market so right now the users can enter tournaments my pain away I'm token they can also play in free mode which is a training they don't have to pay anything but if you want to participate in tournaments where you can actually win the one to open there's an entry fee after that everybody pays the sentry G. there's a comedian all that is being formed on the first forty percent of users that get in the rankings how the distribution of tokens and there's a certain are white to that it's all skill based we wanted to have nothing to do with gambling and it's not our business it's not it's not even our cultural center next we're going to launch an interview marketplace that brings even more utility hold on and one thing I forget I forgot to mention is that all of the fees that get eight hundred percent will be burnt there's no foreseeable future where we are going to stop burning the token we already did a one million to one burning last week in Paris it's so it's just a what we see that the tokens are the utility for instance get away around I'm not early morning right now so what we want to hire with an S. diss that it's just like gaming cards where you how president even if let's say you place years ago and you have a cool weapon but you can only use it if you recharge with energy right so this energy would actually be the tokens so if you have an entity that allows you to participate in very special tournaments have this type of access well you want to get the I don't know extra lives when continuing playing all on one you need to reach out to the end of the day okay the end of two gives you the ability to access these services but in order to access them you need to actually let's say reaching your entity by doing so each refill will actually mean I don't remember so we we thought okay mechanisms of doing talking to place and as much as we can the mobile users we have we have the more accelerated the process is

very nice Daniel okay end well look I think we've learned quite a bit about went so you it sounds very interesting I guess as we start to finish off than you I can see on the on your blog you know you guys have written a number of posts on the future of gaming the future of with three in F. T. E.'s you'll be curious to get your thoughts on on where you think oh this is going and and some of the citing product developments the perhaps hitting down the line how are you thinking about with three needs to use over the years to come

I honestly believe that these will rule the market and it uses a technology known as J. bags and yeah Knox as a I don't know just hyping material aren't going to redefine the hall business is actually doing things together not the tokens the tokens I mean it's like the more I would say don't consider that if these entities and I'm unable to open R. T. yes and that he would each have its purpose but and if these will actually be the ones that but at least in gaming will make sense sense but you can also see that big brands start to imagine how their businesses are going to be transformed by using an excuse and this is why we're launching an edge to market place we are also planning an NXT collection games are the perfect ground for getting a lot of people interested in this new way of doing business all interacting with each other of learning new technology and actually let me give an example this is this is so obvious we were in Paris right and we had a booth next door books was an amazing thing binance did you know what that was it wasn't hyper casual games like live what so what you have to do there was a a wall with some squares that were projected from projector and you had a ball at the bottom three meter for me to distance you have to shoot with your foot two and hit a certain square and so you get some swag right yeah this is a lie hyper casual game three days in a row there were two lines of people constantly waiting in line just a heads up all so coming back to where I am and what we're doing is the exact same thing but for one point five billion user addressable market the target is to reach a hundred million so we're not really there's plenty of space for all most likely we have competition which is healthy and good but this is the immense opportunity and well I'm for instance has a mission of onboarding users through games because throughout humanity throughout history humans have been able to learn complex concepts concepts by eliminating this complexity through entertainment and having the fun element and all of a sudden things are not complex things are just intriguing and you make progress

makes sense and yep sounds very exciting Daniel all right well thank you for sharing your thoughts let's finish off could you please again just tell people what they should do where they should go if they want to start to play some games on the whim a platform or the win at the what's the best way for them to get involved

where in order to experience what I'm mentioning just go to web apps you will see our home page and then you have a bottom play the game or this is the browser version or you can go in the apple and Google play I'm certain we will bring search for web download yep and see what the app is about the docking is listed on gate and banking swap we will be in three weeks time in Dubai at the future blockchain summit where if you guys are there with more than would be more than happy to show everybody what our vision is why we believe in it so much and why this gaming part focused on on the user experience not on the games themselves are the way to to push mass crypto adoption

it's fantastic all right well on I'll put links to some of those platforms and apps and the the show notes wish you all the best with whim I hope it goes well and it's been fun talking to you Daniel also based on bye for now

thank you very much thank you bye

all right there you go that was Daniel from away Jim man he can talk and yet then you and I would just is chatting off line at the end of the show and yet and you said he got a little bit carried away any does that because you know a system it's it's an emotional process that you go through building these platforms trying to chase down investors though the business all that good stuff so of course you know you get mostly connected to telling the story which is absolutely okay yes all right when there is gaming for was the tomb super casual looks

super

high potentials are like that hi because your game is in crypto

one out

all right we reach the end of the show thank you team thank you for listening and don't forget to subscribe to the conversation and in the

you are using but there is

extinguished once the conversation