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The Future of Gaming DAO or FOGDAO is a decentralized, tokenized community exploring the future of the gaming industry.
00:00:01:19 - 00:00:24:00
Nico Vereecke
GM friends and welcome to the future of gaming. You're listening to our weekly FOGCAST. Today we have Devin Becker and myself, Nico Vereecke. And today we have a very special episode. We are taking a deep dive into Avalon. At the end of February, a few weeks ago, the news drops that Avalon raises $13 million to build an interoperable digital universe.
00:00:24:16 - 00:00:44:09
Nico Vereecke
This can mean a lot of things. And also, I'm kind of happy that you didn't choose the word metaverse. And so for this deep dive, we have probably the best two people joining us to explain exactly what's going on. We have Sean Pinnock, who is the CEO and founder of Avalon, and we have Jeff Butler, who's the chief product officer.
00:00:45:09 - 00:00:55:10
Nico Vereecke
And yeah, we're going to talk about Avalon, what's going on, what's going to happen, what can we look forward to as gamers and very excited to get this off. Jeff, Sean, very welcome to the future of gaming.
00:00:57:05 - 00:00:57:21
Jeff Butler
Thanks for having us.
00:00:59:09 - 00:01:18:08
Nico Vereecke
Good. And Devon, thanks for being here as well as my co-hosts. People will likely know myself and Devon, but Sean and Jeff, would you like to give us a very short background on yourself and then we can kick off how that background rolls into what you're doing now? Perhaps, Sean, you can start.
00:01:18:15 - 00:01:40:15
Sean Pinnock
Yeah. Sounds fantastic. So I've been making video games a really long time. I know I'm a fairly young entrepreneur, especially with what it is that we're trying to build, but really I started making games when I was maybe seven or eight years old. I was an original Modder on Warcraft modded, a ton of video games there. It's really how I got my start and it actually is a lot of what shaped my vision for the game I eventually wanted to make looking at that platform.
00:01:40:15 - 00:01:59:01
Sean Pinnock
Back then, I probably spent three or 4000 hours making games on on work history. I was actually the original Dota modder. It wasn't like the person that made Dota, but I might have made my own spin offs as well as a number of other games later on in my career. I started making indie games in college, had a few fairly successful games, launched on numerous platforms.
00:01:59:12 - 00:02:18:11
Sean Pinnock
I also worked Electronic Arts, did some work with Microsoft, eventually built a virtual reality studio. I believe that something like the Metaverse was going to be the future built some bestselling virtual out of games built technologies for companies like NASA and Universal Studios, and sold that studio in 2021 to build what was ultimately my my dream. And that's Avalon.
00:02:19:15 - 00:02:28:14
Nico Vereecke
But. I have spent probably a couple of thousand hours playing some games and Warcraft three. What was your most successful one? That I did, I will have played.
00:02:29:10 - 00:02:45:13
Sean Pinnock
I really like video game RPG and I actually made my own version of it. It's a game where you go and you play a number of different video game characters you could play as Goku Sora from Kingdom Hearts, Cloud from Final Fantasy, and just like fight monsters from all the different genres of games.
00:02:46:20 - 00:02:50:04
Nico Vereecke
There's a good chance I play that fantastic about you, Jeff.
00:02:51:18 - 00:03:10:07
Jeff Butler
So I was I was super lucky. I was the highest level player in the world during EverQuest Vedha for a period of time and got to be friends with the guys on the development team when they needed somebody to kick off their customer service department. Because they were game developers, they weren't they weren't corporate people, you know, building infrastructure and support.
00:03:11:00 - 00:03:33:13
Jeff Butler
They reached out to me, ended up hiring me. I was the first IQ League. GM. A week later, I was the customer service manager. And by virtue of my love for the customer and the work that I did to try to make sure that bugs were squashed and that the game continued to progress. You know, I structured the live team, for instance.
00:03:34:06 - 00:04:10:00
Jeff Butler
I ended up being the producer of EverQuest, the then world's largest massively multiplayer game. Nine months later, I worked at the company ship. The first three expansions for the game left to co-found several games online with my partner and make Vanguard's slug of heroes from Microsoft end up getting shipped by Sony Online Entertainment again. Worked on a lot of games Marvel Universe online, you know, early pitches for Star Trek online, Harry Potter, Wizarding World Online, all sorts of crazy stuff over the years, most of which didn't end up seeing the light of day, unfortunately.
00:04:10:14 - 00:04:38:04
Jeff Butler
But fast forward to Sony Online Entertainment's attempt to push the genre forward again, based on the ideas that I made out for EverQuest next game that featured UGC and some fairly forward thinking stuff still entirely traditional and Web two based. But there some really great ideas in there. It just so happened that Sean saw an interview that I did with one of my old employees talking about that game.
00:04:38:08 - 00:04:58:06
Jeff Butler
He realized that he and I shared literally the identical vision for what needed to happen in the future. He reached out to me and started pitching me a game, and I held in my hand and said, Hold on, let me finish. And I pitched him the rest of the game. And he said, like, this is doesn't make any sense.
00:04:58:06 - 00:05:16:23
Jeff Butler
Do you have our documents? Are you doing due diligence for one of our investors? And I said, No, it's the game that I want to make like this in my head. And he and I worked together very closely over the course of the last year plus and literally we have the same game in our head every time we turn around.
00:05:17:17 - 00:05:19:14
Jeff Butler
We said the same thing that we're looking for it.
00:05:19:19 - 00:05:24:02
Sean Pinnock
It's the game that I think most gamers have been dreaming of for a really long time.
00:05:25:07 - 00:05:33:06
Jeff Butler
It is now. We say, I'm tired of reading about it in books and science fiction. It's time for it to be reality.
00:05:33:06 - 00:05:36:18
Devin Becker
It's called the Game Jinx.
00:05:37:05 - 00:05:44:01
Nico Vereecke
Okay. Thanks, Evan. Before we continue, Jeff, what's the story behind that enormous sword behind you?
00:05:45:10 - 00:05:59:11
Jeff Butler
Oh, this is this is just a Lord of the Rings sword. You want an enormous sword? I had a £300, seven and a half feet long sword in my library for about a year and a half. Wow. The sword from the sword from Lost Ark, actually.
00:05:59:21 - 00:06:13:08
Nico Vereecke
Wow. Amazing. Good. So, okay, you have a conversation. You're pitching your the same game essentially to each other. Yeah. What happened next?
00:06:14:03 - 00:06:36:08
Jeff Butler
We you know, initially, Sean reached out to me to consult and just talk about games. And we realized that we really shared a vision. And over the course of a couple of weeks talking together, we realized that we wanted to work together. And so Sean said, let's let's join forces. Join my join my company that I'm just getting ready to launch.
00:06:36:17 - 00:07:09:22
Jeff Butler
And everything was just worked out perfect. It seemed like a perfect marriage. In terms of our vision for what we wanted to see happen, I laugh, You know, I have cynicism and experience. I've built a lot of games large and small, and Sean had youthful exuberance a lot and a lot of experience, like pulling pulling games up from from the grassroots level building teams, which which also was one of my favorite things to do together.
00:07:10:07 - 00:07:40:11
Jeff Butler
We cover a lot of bases and we've added to our team in exactly that way effectively, you know, making making any large piece of technology is is a massive undertaking. When you talk about what could be a metaverse, even more so the tools to build a metaverse, they haven't been built yet. Even more so. Right. Having the perspective coming from multiple points of view, it's key to success.
00:07:41:02 - 00:08:01:21
Sean Pinnock
Yeah, it you know, it's incredibly rare to especially in the games industry to find someone who really shares your creative vision. You know, working in this industry, there's a lot of intensely creative people. But traditionally, we all have really radical and different ideas. And throughout nearly every game and every project I've worked on, the people that I've worked with have had different ideas.
00:08:01:21 - 00:08:25:05
Sean Pinnock
And that's not necessarily a bad thing. But it can be when those people have the share of control of creative leadership and, you know, when when I spoke to Jeff, this person that really helped pioneer EverQuest, which helped pioneer MMO as I mean World of Warcraft would not be what it is today. And then the building ship now built to this day without EverQuest to find this person that shared this ultimate vision as me was incredibly gratifying.
00:08:25:05 - 00:08:42:08
Sean Pinnock
And I also knew that I needed I needed him to help me to really run the business what it is we're doing. But talking about the team we've built, I mean, really, it's going to come down to building incredible team and empowering those people towards a unified vision to build Avalon. And I'm incredibly proud of the team we've built.
00:08:42:08 - 00:09:03:13
Sean Pinnock
We've pulled together rock stars from all different types of games. We've got people from Call of Duty, but one of the original founders is on our team. We've got people that worked on Elden Ring, Assassin's Creed, God of War, a number of other really amazing titles. But people from around the world too, with diverse backgrounds, people with different cultural understandings.
00:09:03:13 - 00:09:09:13
Sean Pinnock
And it's going to be all of those forces sort of passionately pulling together towards what it is that we're trying to do that's going to make this a reality.
00:09:10:19 - 00:09:44:08
Jeff Butler
We've been very fortunate to build a company with a culture that's not ego driven. I'm sure you guys heard the stories talking about games of, you know, creative ego, disagreement, people pulling projects in multiple directions at once and not being able to get along. We've we've been extremely fortunate, but also very vigilant to make sure that we bring people on board who share that creative vision so that we you know, it's a lot of work creating piece, piece of technology.
00:09:44:14 - 00:10:11:06
Jeff Butler
We don't want that work being a fight for what the final goal is, right? That draws a draw. It saps creativity and enthusiasm for your product. And truthfully, we've we've seen this same enthusiasm and vision from other potential partners as well, not just people within our own company, people who are also working in the web web3 space, creating technology there.
00:10:11:16 - 00:10:28:08
Jeff Butler
There's sort of ultimate vision for where they want to go is the sort of product that we're working on, technology that we're creating. So finding these people headed in the same direction with the opportunity to make partnerships is going to be key to our success.
00:10:28:15 - 00:10:35:07
Nico Vereecke
Well, tell me about your vision in the game that you're pitching to each other, that initial conversation.
00:10:36:10 - 00:10:58:02
Sean Pinnock
Yeah, you know, it's essentially imagine a universe where there are tons of games built by tons of people, but inside of that universe, there's different intellectual property that Inter operates. And one moment you're playing a game, let's say it's at least an example. One of our partners, let's say Merit circles, built a world. They built their own universe.
00:10:58:02 - 00:11:14:02
Sean Pinnock
It's a high fantasy universe. They have a city. It kind of looks like it kind of looks like a minister here. It's from Lord of the Rings, but it's their own version of adaptation of it. I'm inside of that city. The Guild leader's actually wearing the one ring, but he also is carrying lightsabers and there's an invasion going on his leg.
00:11:14:03 - 00:11:37:12
Sean Pinnock
One of our other partners, and they fly in and they're flying into star destroyers and to attack Circle City. And then there's paratroopers dropping out of the sky. And one of the paratroopers is dressed like Darth Vader. Another one looks like Superman. And this is all intellectual property that we've partnered with, different IP that we partner with and items that users have created with those partnerships.
00:11:37:12 - 00:11:56:05
Sean Pinnock
And so those worlds and then are certified in the blockchain, there's there's rarely the scarcity, maybe there's only one, one, one ring. That's why it's called the one ring. And but there's nine. There's the nine rings of men, there's the rings of elves, the rings of dwarves. And they all have their own unique functionality, right? So that that kind of paints just a sliver of the vision.
00:11:56:22 - 00:12:17:12
Sean Pinnock
Ultimately, what it is that we're trying to do is make it really easy for people to make contact with our tools and then have it all certified. With a virtual economy. Decentralization and distributed services are really important to us. How do we build the technology in a way that isn't? Is it just hosted by us but has longevity far beyond the success or failure of Avalon?
00:12:18:02 - 00:12:21:23
Sean Pinnock
And the only way to do that is to build and distribute architecture. So that's something that we're doing as well.
00:12:23:11 - 00:12:43:07
Devin Becker
You got to wonder, though, just a quick question on that. How how does it interact with game balance and multiple worlds interacting? Like are you talking like a sandbox environment or are you talking a game environment? Because I wasn't really clear because like if it's a game environment, right? Game game balance is a factor there. Like those lightsabers, the star destroyers versus medieval stuff doesn't sound very balanced, right?
00:12:43:07 - 00:12:48:06
Devin Becker
But if it's a sandbox, you know, where it's like Disney Infinity or something or everything's just mashing together, who cares, right?
00:12:48:07 - 00:13:06:21
Sean Pinnock
Well, you know, there's actually an answer to that. So it is game and it's game balance and there's a way to do that. And, you know, it's something like, for example, I'm a I'm a huge follower of things like, you know, Teresa and like character battles across different universes and there's a way to say, okay, how strong is the one ring?
00:13:07:02 - 00:13:28:02
Sean Pinnock
How would someone with the one ring fare against someone carrying a lightsaber, a Jedi, how would a Jedi fare against Goku? You know, before he was a super saying that these are these are actual things that we could reinforce with numbers. It's going to be an incredibly complex problem to solve, but it's something we want to do. But, Jeff, you want elaborate a little bit.
00:13:28:22 - 00:14:00:19
Jeff Butler
So interoperability is going to be incredibly important, I think take a universe, right? Take take the Marvel Cinematic Universe, for example. Right. We if we were all the four of us custodians of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, we would have to craft a story and a framework whereby She-Hulk can punch Thor. Or what happens if either one of them punch a normal person?
00:14:00:19 - 00:14:29:15
Jeff Butler
Very bad things. Obviously, Spider-Man, who's not nearly as strong as Thor. What happens when Neil near hits Spider-Man in the shoulder? All the all the simple single universe questions? You know, that you might you might be able to very quickly as a game designer create a structure for we simply need to extend that structure into other universes. What would happen, you know, if somebody pulled a phaser on a person who was carrying a blaster like Han Solo?
00:14:29:15 - 00:15:01:04
Jeff Butler
It's a complex problem, but it's by no means impossible to solve. Right, Right. You know, just just like pen and paper games have created universal systems, we'll create a system of filters and interoperability that allow people who create worlds to disallow things like, oh, you know, welcome, gentlemen, to my world. There's no magic here. Oh, no magic. Oh, so if I bring you mean you're saying if I bring the one ring and Excalibur with me that they don't work?
00:15:01:12 - 00:15:23:08
Jeff Butler
Yes, that's correct. They don't work here or they do work. Everything works. Your phaser and your one ring both work, for example. So as you can imagine, the ability to create worlds and to set up those game balance elements that are all going to be based on interoperability and filters.
00:15:24:05 - 00:15:32:21
Devin Becker
I think the analogy to RPGs like is actually probably a good one. Then something like curbs or some of those other attempts at Universal. I mean, there's a lot more of them now, but you know.
00:15:33:15 - 00:15:38:09
Jeff Butler
There's like there's lots more of that stuff. I mean, you can look at Pathfinder, their star finder, there's Pathfinder.
00:15:39:07 - 00:15:58:07
Devin Becker
And that makes sense, right? And obviously interoperable. But but it sounds like you're also talking about like some some ways for permissions within worlds, right? Like some customizability. So like, hey, maybe sorry you can't bring Thor's hammer over here to this medieval world because it's too strong for this world, or because we don't allow magic in this world or whatever it is, Right?
00:15:58:07 - 00:16:06:22
Devin Becker
Yeah, but. And so then, like, there is some limitations to interoperability that are customizable by the people that are configurable or.
00:16:07:04 - 00:16:40:03
Jeff Butler
You know, permissions systems, you know, you can build. In my world, no, this is a pre-built world and you can't build in my world. Or you can own land and then you can build whatever you want to build there. So on and so forth. We want to create we want to create the tools that would allow someone like an intellectual property owner to create their own game where you could have a game like Cyberpunk 2077, living inside the technology that we create or Gears of War online, living in the technology that we create.
00:16:40:12 - 00:17:07:04
Jeff Butler
If you take two steps back and look at look at the existing body, you know, the sort of the cadre of modders and content creators out there, there there are hundreds of thousands of people who mod Skyrim, Fallout four, you know, Cyberpunk 2077 who are crying out for a place where all of their work can be showcased, where they can earn money for their efforts, right?
00:17:07:06 - 00:17:15:00
Jeff Butler
Where they don't have to like put up a patriarchy account and hope that someone will give you $0.50 for the thing that you just spent two months working on.
00:17:17:19 - 00:17:36:11
Nico Vereecke
As a risk investor. When I'm listening to a pitch, especially a pitch, leveraging, you know, new technologies and doing things that weren't really able were really possible before. One question I have to ask is why now? Why is this the time to be building something like this?
00:17:36:18 - 00:17:56:00
Sean Pinnock
You know, it's funny you say that we actually spoke with the people that made that jump. What's that Second Life very recently. And he said to us, you know, Avalon is the game that we really wanted to make 20 years ago, but the technology just wasn't there. The technology is, I think, really coming together great at this moment.
00:17:56:11 - 00:17:59:03
Sean Pinnock
We're kind of sitting at a time.
00:17:59:13 - 00:18:00:20
Jeff Butler
Where it's a singularity.
00:18:00:21 - 00:18:20:04
Sean Pinnock
A singularity of events, a singularity of technology. We've got generative AI just making leaps, Unreal Engine five with nanotechnology. I mean, people can build worlds inside of Babylon as dense as Coruscant. Coruscant from Star Wars, Lego to Google. Of course, I look at the ancient world as without having to know or understand anything about game development optimization.
00:18:20:04 - 00:18:34:13
Jeff Butler
Ten years ago, Niko, I couldn't give you personal land in a game based on Unreal that would allow you the freedom of making all that. Okay, let's make order more. You know, just.
00:18:34:16 - 00:18:54:01
Sean Pinnock
And now we can actually own our assets. We can we can build payment rails, we can build distributed architecture. We can put tens of thousands of people in servers together. It's all coming together. We can even vote all this stuff on the Web because of cloud rendering. I mean, imagine like the most one of the most beautiful games you've ever seen just on a browser.
00:18:54:01 - 00:19:12:18
Sean Pinnock
That's what we're talking about here. It's all this technology come together at once and then typing in a text prompt. Hey, I want a high fantasy city by the hills, put some goblins in there, and then, Oh, by the way, all these goblins are intelligent because they're running. There's there's a catchy beat like technology running these goblins. They have a database of information.
00:19:12:18 - 00:19:27:02
Sean Pinnock
They understand goblin language. They understand about the law of the law in the world because you gave them some of that information. Don't need this thing in a text from. And then you generate that little world that that's what we're going in. And it wasn't possible ten years ago. The convergence of technology is now.
00:19:27:19 - 00:19:52:22
Jeff Butler
Not not even remotely I mean, look at look at no man's sky. No, no man's sky promised procedural generation of content. And it took some time to reach that goal. Procedural, simple procedural generation of content has yet to reach the, you know, the sort of lofty experience and the science fiction promise where it's like, oh, wait, are there quests there?
00:19:52:22 - 00:20:29:17
Jeff Butler
Are there, you know, like really how how much content is there? You know, look at World of Warcraft, the amount of time that it takes to create every single zone, every five meter square area of the world is hand-curated an artist went in and fiddled around with it takes a lot of work and that's that. That's the paradigm existing in massively multiplayer games today that that we seek to break that that the company can never create content the the art the authoring company can never create content rapidly enough to satisfy the player.
00:20:30:10 - 00:21:02:07
Jeff Butler
Look at, you know, look at Dungeons and Dragons Dungeons and Dragons launched in you know, the mid seventies without content. The only content there was was the content you created yourself. Then they realized that they could create their own content, bring people into their worlds, and that they would be incredibly captivated. They could take fantasy, authorship and shoehorn it into these Dungeons and Dragons adventures, started to make good money doing that content, and alongside them, other people were able to create content to personally.
00:21:02:07 - 00:21:25:16
Jeff Butler
Then it exploded when they said, Here, you can make content in our universe and we'll blessed right with third edition and open gaming license, you know, which recently came into the news when they threatened to revoke those rights. Right? People were up in arms. This is a great example of what could happen in in the games industry with people able to author content.
00:21:25:16 - 00:21:32:06
Jeff Butler
I'd love to see companies form to author content in the tool that we provide.
00:21:32:06 - 00:21:51:17
Devin Becker
Right. But that begs the question, though, is your tool mainly for partners or players for UGC stuff or trying to serve both masters like who's Who's it primarily directed because you've spoken about the partners that you have right across the IP stuff and dealing with that stuff, but like, how much does player have involvement or are they just playing with those toys?
00:21:51:23 - 00:22:11:00
Sean Pinnock
And ultimately, I mean, when we talk about building something like the Oasis, because that's that's really what we're trying to do. We say a lot, you know, it can't be built by a single company. It can't be built even by a handful of companies. I mean, look at what Facebook is trying to achieve right now, how much money they've spent and they haven't been able to get close, in my opinion.
00:22:11:00 - 00:22:26:01
Sean Pinnock
You need to make it easy for anyone to be able to create, for anyone to build, and then for all those world to be interoperable. And then in the future, someday we could have something like an oasis. So really we see what we're building is for the players, for the people. Yes. We're going to do a lot of partnerships.
00:22:26:01 - 00:22:40:14
Sean Pinnock
Yes, we'll we'll onboard different intellectual property and we'll build worlds with those things. But then we want to extend that intellectual property to our users. We'll make a good game, a good experience out of those things. But then, Devin, you'll take those tools and then you'll go build a better one with some of this intellectual property.
00:22:40:14 - 00:22:41:04
Devin Becker
Demonstrate.
00:22:41:21 - 00:22:42:17
Sean Pinnock
That's what we want to see.
00:22:43:17 - 00:23:07:16
Jeff Butler
It starts it starts with one person. Think about content authorship on YouTube, right? It starts with one person, a single entity who's working alone. It could be a young person, could be someone, you know, college could be could be an older person. And then it goes, you know, from that point they form collaborations. I do great work modeling.
00:23:07:19 - 00:23:44:16
Jeff Butler
Sean is a spectacular scripter. You get a texture artist. He next thing you know, you've got a large group of people. Or you could start with 100 people working on existing intellectual property, using using our AR tools as an extension of, you know, products like Unreal Engine, because you can author content in an interoperable world and take advantage of all the people who are participating without having to cannibalize the marketplace as every other massively multiplayer game currently does.
00:23:44:23 - 00:23:59:14
Jeff Butler
You know, the the web to have memos that are going to release over the course of the next year are generally cannibalizing from the same from the same space. That's another paradigm that really needs to be broken.
00:23:59:22 - 00:24:22:05
Sean Pinnock
And we talk about, you know, MMO lot in an RPG, and it's true that we're building systems around that to kind of balance interoperability to the best of our ability. Not an easy feat. Of course, it's an incredibly challenging feat, but there will be systems in place where people can get that as well. Like let's say, for example, someone wants to build a world and that world does it need to have more big elements.
00:24:22:05 - 00:24:40:03
Sean Pinnock
And so they decided to rip out the quote unquote Dungeons and Dragons d20 ruleset and they want to build their own. That's totally fine. Maybe their world is more like Stardew Valley. Or maybe it's a concert. It's a world for concerts, It's Madison Square Garden, the New York City, and none of that stuff is relevant. But you can bring your characters in here.
00:24:40:03 - 00:25:00:12
Sean Pinnock
You can look like Superman because you've got his stuff. You can you can carry Excalibur and into the concert. That's fine. So just depends on the user depending on what they want to build. But we are pretty focused initially on the gamification and the sort of role playing game elements because we think that's going to be how people get onboarded into it, not metaverse.
00:25:01:05 - 00:25:10:10
Jeff Butler
And we think that's part of the core entertainment loop anyway. I mean, the mosh pit with Excalibur is going to be a lot more fun.
00:25:10:10 - 00:25:44:01
Nico Vereecke
So I've spent some time looking at UGC game creation platforms in all shapes and sizes. I think the the two that I want to use as an example now are Roblox and Fortnite's creative mode. Both of them have been able to scale to success. Roblox has done that through time. I would say it took them 20 years and now maybe of the past six seven they've reached a critical mass of of creators that actually provide the content for the new players to come in and then start that that viral loop.
00:25:44:21 - 00:26:06:02
Nico Vereecke
Looking at Fortnite's creative modes, it's already in the name. Their success and their critical skill came of the success, the enormous success of Fortnite, and that's how both of these have managed to solve the so-called Gold Star problem, where you need content for players to come in, but you need players in order to incentivize builders to actually create the content.
00:26:06:20 - 00:26:09:06
Nico Vereecke
How are you guys going to be solving the culture problems?
00:26:09:13 - 00:26:12:11
Sean Pinnock
It's funny you say called START because I'm reading the book right now.
00:26:12:16 - 00:26:13:07
Jeff Butler
There you have it.
00:26:14:18 - 00:26:42:14
Sean Pinnock
But yeah, and you brilliant guy. Anyway, for us, we have a saying in the studio that's really important and I, I look at those companies and I still don't think they've fully captured this, you know, as an original Warcraft three model, which really was like one of the first, I think, successful UGC platforms, something that they did pretty well and I haven't seen done as well yet, although Fortnite creative I think is starting to kind of grab this is creating really needs to feel like playing.
00:26:43:09 - 00:27:02:06
Sean Pinnock
It doesn't quite feel like that in those platforms like we want it like this is why I think MindTap was so successful is the creation loop and the playing loop are basically the same thing and we want to really push that as far as we can. Like Hogwarts Legacy, which released recently, they have a creative mode as well and they're casting spells to build things and it really feels like you're playing a video game.
00:27:02:12 - 00:27:23:19
Sean Pinnock
We're pushing that much further than these other games, that ideology like making it really simplified. And I use the work cup, for example, because they have a scripting system built in that At me as a nine year old, I was using to create events to create functionality in my product, I had no idea I was actually making code and it's because they abstracted it so much to me as a user that it didn't feel like it.
00:27:24:00 - 00:27:41:04
Sean Pinnock
And so we're pushing those ideas really far. And then the other thing that's really differentiate us is that standard for interoperability so that you know that you can create assets that interoperate with these other games. And in the scalability too, we're talking about worlds with tens of thousands of people, worlds with extreme density, because we're leveraging all the latest technology.
00:27:41:08 - 00:27:54:00
Sean Pinnock
I mean, Tim Sweeney himself said that he doesn't necessarily think epic will be the one to build the metaverse, but he thinks that his tools will be used by another company to build the metaverse. And that's exactly what we're trying to do.
00:27:54:22 - 00:28:17:16
Jeff Butler
Tim Tim stood in my break room 20 years ago at several games online. It was 2:00 in the morning on a Saturday, and he had come out to help me with a milestone delivery that was coming up in the in the in the week from from Microsoft. And you know I said I really didn't expect you to come out and help firsthand.
00:28:18:01 - 00:28:42:07
Jeff Butler
And he shook his head and said, what you're making are you're making a massively multiplayer game using my technology. And what I want to see in the future is unreal, he said. I envision islands of of content that are connected through Unreal, where you're where people can move from your game to a to another game because Unreal makes that possible.
00:28:42:15 - 00:29:09:18
Jeff Butler
He said. If I don't work with you and learn how to extend Unreal to serve a massively multiplayer game, I'll never reach that goal. That was 20 years ago and so Unreal has continued to move in that direction. Nanite Neo nanite geometry, nanite skeletal mesh. It's you know what what nanite is capable of right now. You would consider almost black magic, right?
00:29:10:10 - 00:29:16:14
Jeff Butler
Trillions of dollars on screen, 60 frames per second. Ridiculous assertion ten years ago.
00:29:16:16 - 00:29:39:11
Sean Pinnock
As a game developer, when Nanite came out, I was like, no, The billions of polygons now B.S. Bullcrap. And so I loaded up a scene an hour and a half later on, my jaw just on on the floor. I no, those engineers over there, they crack the code. They crack the code again, like we're talking we build worlds with literally trillions of polygons.
00:29:39:11 - 00:29:44:21
Sean Pinnock
It doesn't We just we just throw whatever we want out. It doesn't matter. It just works. It's pretty, pretty amazing.
00:29:45:02 - 00:30:06:14
Jeff Butler
Ultimately, there will be and there will be an upward limit. Every technology has its limitations, but the fact of the matter is we want to be able to show scenes. You know, of incredible density, depth and detail like Coruscant King's Landing. Right. Look, you know, look, look. The rendering of King's Landing in Game of Thrones. Okay? That there's a lot of work that goes into that rendering, Right?
00:30:06:15 - 00:30:13:17
Jeff Butler
It probably took a server farm a month to render those scenes. Right. Turning on them.
00:30:13:17 - 00:30:34:14
Sean Pinnock
But yeah, to be clear, there are there are limitations. Like if you open up Unreal five and you try and build a scene, like course you're not. You're not going to be able to unless you're a game development house with 30 people and you spend a lot of time. What we're doing is we're taking this the things that we know that work using our game development, knowledge and then building towards the user can do that.
00:30:34:17 - 00:30:48:02
Sean Pinnock
They don't have to they don't have to understand that, oh, hey, after about a thousand draw cars, you're going to hit your render limit. You can't use this many textures. You can't build something. Right. And they need to understand those things because we're just going to make it. So that's how it all works. And it's the part of gamifying the experience, right?
00:30:48:02 - 00:30:54:23
Sean Pinnock
We don't we want to make it easy. I want I want a group of 13 year olds in a in a weekend to build a fun game, not to worry about what it is that we're doing.
00:30:55:01 - 00:31:10:17
Jeff Butler
Just just do it. I want I want it to be entertaining from a moment to moment standpoint and entertaining to watch as well. Right. We've we've realized very strongly over recent years that a game needs to be entertaining to watch.
00:31:13:04 - 00:31:21:19
Nico Vereecke
As a from a gamer perspective, what is the main problem with most today that you're trying to solve for that big one?
00:31:21:19 - 00:31:37:19
Jeff Butler
You can't create content rapidly enough. So you know, if I were Activision Blizzard, I can't make while fast enough if I'm, you know, literally if I'm Square Enix, I can't make Final Fantasy 14 updates fast enough. I can't create content rapidly.
00:31:38:03 - 00:31:54:06
Sean Pinnock
And to tag on to that too like it feels like the same loop. Like I'm doing the same thing over and over again. Okay. I'm I'm doing a fetch quest. I'm doing a dungeon that has this that has this thing. I'm doing this raid like it's the same sort of thing I've been eating for the last 15 years.
00:31:54:09 - 00:32:16:05
Sean Pinnock
Static world static world treadmill cycle tool and it's boring. I like what I want to do is experience new, meaningful content that feels valuable for me as a player. How do I do that? How do I get there? We need so much content. We need so much novel content that it always feels needed, feels fresh, and we need dungeons that literally no one has ever done before.
00:32:16:17 - 00:32:30:15
Sean Pinnock
Constantly. We need we need there to be an endless staircase with a vision in the future that we all want to go to. The only way we get there is by creating tools that make it so easy and so fun to make content that the content is just never ending.
00:32:30:15 - 00:32:36:14
Devin Becker
So you mean from players, Not from me. I write like or you trying to be both. Like the both Enabling players.
00:32:36:15 - 00:32:52:04
Sean Pinnock
Enabling both. Yeah. So like with to to actually make games for me, I would like them to make whole games for me. I were a little bit off, but I mean, I say a little bit. I mean, I think 5 to 10 years. I think in ten years you could do it. We could be at that point.
00:32:53:00 - 00:32:54:10
Jeff Butler
And you can starting point.
00:32:54:20 - 00:32:55:22
Sean Pinnock
We can start augmenting it.
00:32:56:19 - 00:33:28:21
Jeff Butler
Yeah. Think about I don't know how much you guys look at like Skyrim mods, right? You got a fallout in Fallout Nexus. Skyrim Nexus. Look, look at those single player games and see the body of content that has been created by content authors, not the company. Over the course of the years since those games launched, I mean, we could log on and play a modded game of Fallout four and spend a month playing right and not run out of content.
00:33:29:00 - 00:33:49:04
Devin Becker
I guess referencing them though, begs the question. So like they ran into the problem of like monetization around it, right? Like players monetizing their own modded content. And that's been a real sticking point. Even like, you know, look, you know what happened with Blizzard and mods and like there's just been an issue, right? People monetizing things and now like you guys are talking about IP mixed into that as well.
00:33:49:04 - 00:34:00:16
Devin Becker
You've got like the whole controversy over the Dandy beyond stuff like licensing of IP stuff and content created from that. Like how are you guys looking to help solve like the players motivation outside of just sheer creativity?
00:34:00:16 - 00:34:16:17
Sean Pinnock
So it's funny you say that because I again, I look back at work history and MOBAs. I mean, look at how much money League of Legends and Dota two and the number of other members have made. And if and if work have to just figured out how to monetize their UGC platform, it'd be the most it'd be the most dominant game in the world today.
00:34:17:00 - 00:34:33:07
Sean Pinnock
It would be because you'd have League of Legends on there, you'd have a number of other games on there. I mean, they invented Tower defense games. They invented so many things against art essentially exist on there in a much more small format. But we need to build payment rails around these systems. And blockchain is actually an incredibly good solution for that.
00:34:33:12 - 00:34:51:18
Sean Pinnock
How do we make it so that these you again, Devin, how do we make it so that you make a piece of content? If the Pokémon company's content is a Pokémon world and so that when you, when you create a world and someone buys an asset in that world, you get paid, the Pokémon company gets paid, and that person that bought it, when they sell it again, everyone gets paid again.
00:34:51:23 - 00:35:12:12
Sean Pinnock
Or even better yet, Niko, you come, you look at the video and you go, That's cool. I think I can make it better. You each speak to Devin, you create a new spin up version of the world, You modify it some, and then, Niko, you get paid. Devin You get paid, the Pokémon company gets paid. And every person that buys an asset down the line and this can happen X number of times, however many times it needs to happen and will be a system, I'll tell you that.
00:35:12:12 - 00:35:14:08
Sean Pinnock
And they'll be built directly into the smart contract.
00:35:15:07 - 00:35:30:09
Devin Becker
I mean, is that going to be depended on on working with partners then that are a bit more permissive like you bring up Pokemon, right? But we know like Nintendo, for example, is just not a fan of people doing anything with their work, right? Whereas you know, like the D and B, D beyond stuff was trying to find kind of that middle ground, like, how do we take royalties from this?
00:35:30:09 - 00:35:45:15
Devin Becker
Maybe from people that are making a lot of money, or how do we like take a cut? And obviously, like we see marketplaces doing that, But we also saw heavy pushback from trying to monetize like Bethesda's mods, right? Like that was part of the reason I bring that up is there was like a lot of user pushback even from that stuff.
00:35:45:15 - 00:36:02:03
Jeff Butler
Part of part of the problem is that that there's there are issues traditionally of tracking, right. You know, who who is who's paying you know, there's no structure set up to support any of this work, and that's work that we plan on doing.
00:36:02:11 - 00:36:21:22
Sean Pinnock
But blockchain technology is actually very unique in that it helps significantly with this problem. It's not it's funny because it's not even the primary reason we're using it, although it does help significant problem. Technically, it can be solved without blockchain, but it helps a lot. The primary reason is really decentralization. The metaverse can't be a walled garden and we need interoperability and that's really the primary reason.
00:36:22:04 - 00:36:37:17
Sean Pinnock
But Devin, I think that, you know, companies are really going to want in what is really going to run in this because they're going to see the economic opportunity and they're just going to want a piece of the action. But you're right in that, you know, the Pokémon company may not be one of the first companies and maybe one of the companies that we get much later.
00:36:37:21 - 00:36:57:07
Sean Pinnock
And it may just be that it's a lot of our own intellectual property that people start with and we sort of slowly grabbing of their intellectual property. I mean, look at Fortnite today, look at all the potential property in that platform. If you if you have a game as popular as that, it's going to come. And I will say just anecdotally, we've we've had a lot of good conversations.
00:36:57:07 - 00:36:59:16
Sean Pinnock
I can't say more than that, but we've had a lot of good conversations around that.
00:37:01:20 - 00:37:03:23
Jeff Butler
Massive intellectual property holders.
00:37:05:01 - 00:37:08:05
Sean Pinnock
All right. Tell me about all the property you've worked with in the past.
00:37:10:17 - 00:37:24:04
Jeff Butler
Star Wars, Star Trek, Dungeons and Dragons, Harry Potter, Wizarding World, The List, Warhammer, 40 K, on and on.
00:37:24:09 - 00:37:44:14
Sean Pinnock
Our chief chief operating officer was the head of business development for North America then and now, and he's working in an encampment he's worked with nearly and not every intellectual property, but I would say most of the big ones you can think of. So we've got there, it's going to be come down to, you know, does this make business sense for these people?
00:37:44:14 - 00:37:48:12
Sean Pinnock
And at some point, I believe the answer is absolutely yes, unequivocally yes.
00:37:48:12 - 00:38:20:10
Jeff Butler
Or a forward thinking. Any one of these individual companies are take take, you know, pick an intellectual property, let's say Star Wars. How forward thinking or the people who are currently responsible at Disney for Star Wars. What what sort of what sort of splash do they want to make? It's clear to the to the four of us here that they were forward thinking enough to allow their assets to be used in ready player one It's not star power.
00:38:20:11 - 00:38:26:06
Jeff Butler
Spielberg Right. Not, not Star Wars movie, but there's an had.
00:38:26:06 - 00:38:36:03
Devin Becker
It Are you guys looking to also build content moderation tools for these So like for example the big the big question that comes up of course is time to penis right. And like Lego and for 25.
00:38:36:05 - 00:38:37:06
Jeff Butler
27 seconds.
00:38:37:12 - 00:38:46:07
Devin Becker
Right right. And so like that was like Lego was a great example of dealing with that constantly because they're like as a company, they're built around the idea of UGC.
00:38:46:07 - 00:38:51:19
Jeff Butler
That they're, they're online games that have shut down, that have been shut down because of TTP.
00:38:51:22 - 00:38:57:00
Devin Becker
Exact Right. And so that's why. So are you guys trying to help with that or you're like, that's on you guys building the world's.
00:38:57:12 - 00:39:29:12
Jeff Butler
We're going to if we're going to be a mature game, right right out of the gate for a number of reasons around the world and you know epic epic recently discovered this with Fortnite around the world, laws are changing, forcing online experiences to focus more on mature persons, right to to remove children and people who can can be harmed by mature interaction from the online environment.
00:39:29:18 - 00:39:33:02
Jeff Butler
So we'll be focused on mature players.
00:39:33:19 - 00:39:51:02
Sean Pinnock
Mature. So there's a couple of caveats there because obviously he's the Pokémon company's reference, which wouldn't work in a mature setting. But you look at Roblox and you go Holy, like, look at all the things that are going on, Roblox, all the bad things. And you go, Wow, that's, that's not good. We're going to have to build technology that helps with moderation.
00:39:51:07 - 00:40:14:13
Sean Pinnock
We are we are initially a mature platform. I would say we're more platform than a game, but with games inside of it. However, in the future, we're very interested in building worlds that are targeted towards younger audiences. But those worlds will be separated from the mature, the mature ones, right? And they'll be very clearly defined as and these will be different games that are targeted towards younger people and we'll have to have a much more hands on, perhaps whitelisted approach.
00:40:14:19 - 00:40:32:11
Sean Pinnock
For example, my daughter right now, she's two and she just discovered YouTube kids completely different than YouTube. Right. And that's how I think of Avalon. We'll probably have, you know, universes we call that are catered towards children, but initially that mature, mature audiences can be our focus. So the Pokémon company is probably not going to be there out of the launch date.
00:40:32:11 - 00:40:36:02
Sean Pinnock
That might be, you know, when we do Avalon Kids or something like that in the future. But yeah.
00:40:36:18 - 00:40:40:22
Devin Becker
As long as you can keep the Furries isolated to their own world, we're fine as here.
00:40:40:23 - 00:40:43:14
Nico Vereecke
Devin can go hang out. It's good, right? Yeah.
00:40:43:14 - 00:40:45:11
Devin Becker
Thanks as much for Second Life.
00:40:48:00 - 00:41:23:11
Nico Vereecke
I want to touch upon with Regan. We like to talk about that topic here on the show. You know, Jeff, you and I, we met Vickie last year in New York or GDC, an honorary member, and we were having a discussion about New York. What would three brings to games? What is your answer when you're speaking to a experienced way to develop a developer that tells you, Hey, whatever, what three does, we can already do that with existing technology without needing the blockchain.
00:41:23:11 - 00:41:26:03
Nico Vereecke
Go Okay. So it's actually.
00:41:26:07 - 00:41:46:12
Sean Pinnock
Yeah, it's funny, I had a conversation with a very experienced developer, someone that's been in energy for 25 years, a staunch critic of blockchain. They said to me, Look, blockchain just a database. It's a 64 bit integer. I hear that all the time and I say, okay, that's technically true. You know what? Assembly Just a programing language. Why would you use assembly when you know C++?
00:41:46:12 - 00:42:07:09
Sean Pinnock
Just a programing is when you write coding assembly because that's just programing, right? Okay. So it's different. Here's what what makes blockchain unique is what I say. The people that are that are engineers actually understand the technology and I think most of them know this. But then you can think about how it's applicable is that it's not just a it's not just a database, it's a decentralized peer to peer network that's scalable and secure.
00:42:07:22 - 00:42:33:03
Sean Pinnock
So when transactions occur, we're not looking to a centralized server, we're not looking to our server to say, Hey, this is a legit transaction where it said looking to a community and saying this is a legit transaction. When you start thinking about interoperability in the metaverse, that starts to become really important. If we don't want a single company with the GDP of the largest country in the world to literally own the metaverse, we need to decentralize it.
00:42:33:11 - 00:43:01:14
Sean Pinnock
And the authentication layer is how we get there. So we start talking about things like digital ownership. Again, if we don't want a single company to own all of your assets, we want them to live in the community. The way to do it is with decentralization. So our vision for this is how do we solve that problem? But in all of the layers, because there's other layers, like the blockchain doesn't have enough throughput to to carry, you know, assets I like to equate to like the deed of a house, because the reality is it is a small amount of data.
00:43:01:21 - 00:43:21:10
Sean Pinnock
So like when you buy a home or when you buy an item in Avalon or in another game, you're not literally buying that house, the asset, you're buying a deed, your bank deed to the home. So that's what it is a blockchain services for. It solves that problem of the equation. And then, yes, we're going to need more layers to solve the asset problem.
00:43:21:10 - 00:43:36:17
Sean Pinnock
We're going to need an interplanetary file system or a torrent system to host all those assets and to have standards built around those assets. Metadata built into the smart contract that says, okay, when I take this asset from my game and put it into your game, this is where I can pull the asset from. This is the metadata that's associated with it.
00:43:36:17 - 00:43:47:16
Sean Pinnock
This is how it's supposed to work. And I know that it's legit. I know that it's verified because I can verify it through this community, this peer to peer service and not this single server, this overlord of the metaverse. Does that make sense?
00:43:47:19 - 00:44:14:06
Jeff Butler
I guess I have a simple real world answer as developers right now. If you work with Steam, they a big cut, right? If you create content for games that are on Steam and you sell that content on Steam store, that can become a huge, huge cut. But they do in effect mimic the sort of behavior that we're talking about.
00:44:14:10 - 00:44:46:10
Jeff Butler
We can go play Warframe today and you can download someone's skin that an individual author made not, you know, not not, not an official Warframe skin. It's modded content. And we we don't want and really don't can't tolerate the sort of science fiction story that you see in Ready Player one where there's one individual entity in control of all this data and information.
00:44:47:00 - 00:45:09:03
Jeff Butler
If, if, if, you know, if a metaverse is going to be is going to be for people, it's going to include everyone and have a low barrier to entry, which is going to be necessary it to succeed. Right. You know, literally, it's there for everyone. You can you can be educated there. You can you can receive mental health care there and so on and so on.
00:45:09:04 - 00:45:17:00
Jeff Butler
Right. All the all the needs that society is going to have to draw from this technology. It needs to be there for everyone.
00:45:17:00 - 00:45:42:11
Sean Pinnock
And that's part of why I don't believe that what we're doing is even at its ultimate vision, like the metaverse, what really is the metaverse is, I would say we're building a multiverse for a universe at best, but really is a metaverse. As we build this platform, it has all these great games inside of it. But then we can interface with this game, with this platform, with this, with this thing, and what's important is that unlike Steam, when we're moving assets from game and people are buying things over there, we're not we're not taking that.
00:45:42:11 - 00:45:58:04
Sean Pinnock
We're not taking a piece of that action. That's that's their problem. That's their product. It's decentralized. That's what it is that we're really trying to achieve. And that's what blockchain helps us solve. But if we're not careful, what we're going to end up with is something much bigger and much scarier than seeing something much bigger and much scarier than Apple.
00:45:58:04 - 00:46:10:19
Sean Pinnock
And it's going to be this walled garden that just eats everything. And I'm trying to solve that problem. We're trying to solve that problem in blockchain, just a tool in the shed that and we have to look at we have to look at the technology. And be honest, though, a lot of people have, you know, lied a lot.
00:46:10:23 - 00:46:21:10
Sean Pinnock
They've promised a lot of things. They've said they're going to do X, Y or Z, and they've essentially taken advantage of people. And that's not that's not at all what we're about. We just look at it as a tool in the shed to help us solve this problem.
00:46:22:23 - 00:46:47:19
Jeff Butler
We want we want to guard against that virtual dystopia. Right. You know, they say it can be done in Web two, but they haven't done it right. We tried to we argued back in 1999 while we're working on EverQuest that we should head in this direction. And, you know, our corporate overlords and our corporate attorneys, corporate counsel said, no, no, like that.
00:46:47:20 - 00:47:02:13
Jeff Butler
We we can't we don't want to spend the time to craft the ula's and law that could encompass the sort of vision you have that sometime way down the road in the future. Again.
00:47:02:21 - 00:47:17:08
Sean Pinnock
You know, when the Internet was built, we're all really lucky in that it was built by a a essentially a nonprofit trying to create standards and open protocols for the Internet. And that was really great. I was, you know, in the nineties, people and I think it was really the guild was obviously massive. Thank God it was built that way.
00:47:17:15 - 00:47:38:05
Sean Pinnock
But you look at where we are today and essentially, you know, the nature of capitalism and businesses and what we're really having now is these mass of companies just owning parts of the Internet, all, all these centralized services. And these are companies, you know, the largest companies today, I think seven out of ten are technology companies that, really only came into existence the last 30 years, some in the last ten years.
00:47:38:11 - 00:47:58:04
Sean Pinnock
And when you start thinking about, you know, this this metaverse and this new walled garden that's going to happen, it's going to make these other companies look small. And so how can we create open protocols that align with capital, our capitalistic nature society, our Western society that opened and decentralized this technology that's really, really important. And I wish more people were thinking about and talking about it.
00:47:58:13 - 00:48:02:16
Sean Pinnock
How scary is it going to be for one company to own that We talk about 20 years into the future.
00:48:02:16 - 00:48:30:22
Jeff Butler
In 19, in 1985, if this was a four way conference call with with us all around the world, it would have cost hundreds of dollars through AT&T and whatever telecommunication services that we were working with. Imagine what this call would cost if that company were still in charge of everything that we're doing right now. Right. That's what we have to guard against.
00:48:30:22 - 00:48:40:03
Jeff Butler
I don't want to log into the steam metaverse and have 30% of every transaction and everything that I do scraped off the top.
00:48:40:03 - 00:48:48:12
Sean Pinnock
All the advertising, I mean, all the data, all the data they're going to have on you, I mean, it's going to be invasive Iowa industries. Iowa industries, Right.
00:48:49:19 - 00:49:06:15
Devin Becker
Well, then how comfortable would you guys be working, let's say let's say Zuckerberg came up and was like, I like what you guys are building. It's better than what we're doing. We'd like to kind of work together to interface this stuff and, you know, put it on the quest, whatever. Like how, how would you guys be to because you're if you're trying to build interoperable technology, right?
00:49:07:00 - 00:49:17:20
Devin Becker
Do you go, sorry you just don't fit with our our vision. You can't be part of our irreparable thing or is it more, hey, we're trying to build stuff that's permissive. If you want interop, you can do it at this level, right? And that's it.
00:49:18:01 - 00:49:34:02
Sean Pinnock
Like so, I mean, that conversation can go a lot of ways, right? You know what would happen if someone like that tried to acquire us? What would happen if they want to interop with us? Right. There's a there's a lot of different ways it could go. What's most important to us is that we stay true to our vision, our ethics, and what it is that we're trying to achieve.
00:49:34:21 - 00:49:57:20
Sean Pinnock
I think absolutely we'll need partnerships with companies like like Metro, like Facebook, like Amazon will want to work with those companies. And I mean, as long as we can ethically continue doing what is really trying to do and I think as long as honestly we can retain control, we can be certain, at least in the short term, that we can do that.
00:49:57:20 - 00:50:20:22
Sean Pinnock
Now, long term, I say retain control. We were and for our platform, we want to boil it down. It's very important. It's an actual functioning DAO, not not a B.S. We have a Dow like no, like really build this into the platform, have it help regulate Avalon and that's long term vision. Short term, we're going to guide us until we get to a path that we can really slowly and unleash this.
00:50:20:22 - 00:50:32:14
Sean Pinnock
And then down is probably a little bit an antiquated term, some sort of governance. I really like a few. TAQI If you guys Google for Turkey, and it's a funny word, there's a lot to be gathered from that for governance.
00:50:33:22 - 00:51:13:22
Jeff Butler
You know, honestly, interoperability has to it has to it has to start in an individual right. You know, the 13 year old kid, you Devin, we have to be interoperable with all the all of your ideas up to owners of intellectual property large companies consortiums that that want to live and do business in. You know a burgeoning metaverse interoperability has to include them all or not then you're basically making arbitrary decisions about who can complain your playground.
00:51:14:06 - 00:51:35:18
Jeff Butler
Right? That gets that gets ugly pretty quickly. I think will will draw the line at criminals, people, people who wish to exploit, you know, people who have repugnant ideologies. Right. As as determined by a DAO or society in general or the law.
00:51:36:13 - 00:51:53:18
Sean Pinnock
You know, laws. That's that's part of I you know, our motivation for building this in a way that's decentralized and democratizes the laws can't keep up you know the laws from around the world they just they can't keep up with the regulation that is happening. And the regulation needs to happen. Like I don't want to be the arbiter of the metaverse.
00:51:54:00 - 00:52:09:23
Sean Pinnock
And that's that's too big a that's too big a cap for anyone human. The way I don't care who you are, we need to build a democracy into this platform. It needs to be done and we're not going to be able to do it with laws alone. It has to be built into the technology.
00:52:09:23 - 00:52:27:05
Devin Becker
What's going to be the approach to partnership then, in terms of like so like going to be like one one level, which is just saying like, come to us if you're interested and we'll talk about it, which is the like not public at all really version, right? And then there's the, well, we have a partnership program you can apply to here and it, you know, has these terms, whatever.
00:52:27:08 - 00:52:40:15
Devin Becker
And then there's the anyone can build using this API of this technology as long as they're following these technologies. Rules like those are kind of some different levels, like where are you guys looking to go? I know short term maybe haven't been decided completely yet, but yes.
00:52:41:20 - 00:52:43:19
Sean Pinnock
Yes to all three. Yes. So all three.
00:52:44:08 - 00:52:45:02
Devin Becker
Perfect. Yeah.
00:52:45:16 - 00:52:48:22
Jeff Butler
Thank you. You literally answered the question.
00:52:49:01 - 00:53:02:16
Sean Pinnock
Yes to all three. So, I mean, long term, it I mean, when when Avalon releases, it's going to be built in such a way that anyone can just start building, no questions asked. Like if you're a big electro, probably going to jump on that and start building. If you're an individual, you can up on their sub building again, creating needs that feel like playing.
00:53:02:21 - 00:53:16:16
Sean Pinnock
You won't even know you're doing it. You'll be playing the game, but taking out a village of goblins and the next moment you're going to be building a city, right with your buddies. That's not going to work. But then we're going to reach out to the intellectual property to and and try to get them to, you know, hop on board with us.
00:53:16:22 - 00:53:17:08
Sean Pinnock
Go ahead, Jeff.
00:53:18:10 - 00:53:39:05
Jeff Butler
In EverQuest, you weren't allowed to steal intellectual property. So if you made a name like Darth Vader, right, and you started around with Black gear on, we'd come and change your name and people would scream like, Hey, like, I got this name first. Like, do you own the rights to Darth Vader? Well, like, you know, the guy lives in Waukegan.
00:53:39:07 - 00:54:04:13
Jeff Butler
No, he did not own the rights to Darth Vader. So we changed his name. One day we came to a guy named Crichton, the famous Ranger from Forgotten Realms, who's who's in all of our Salvatore's books. And were like, Hey, it's great to meet you dressed. We could change your name. He's like, Why? And we said, Well, because your name is intellectual property, right?
00:54:04:14 - 00:54:28:14
Jeff Butler
Belongs to or a Salvador. And he said, Could you do me a favor? Sure. Before we change your name? Well, yeah. Okay. He's like, Can you look up my registration information from your interface there? And. And the dam was like, Hold on. Sure. Robert something. Salvatore forget what the middle name was. And that was R.A. Salvatore running around in our game as straight steward.
00:54:28:21 - 00:54:43:16
Jeff Butler
And the Dungeon Master said, Well, we hope you're enjoying the game. Thank you, sir. You can keep the name door to door since it belongs to you. Great example of what the future is going to bring to us.
00:54:43:18 - 00:54:50:16
Devin Becker
Well, I hope we have NFT licenses and stuff in the future so that you don't have to ask that question. Exactly. You can ask the blockchain. Do you have permission to do that?
00:54:51:02 - 00:55:05:08
Jeff Butler
Precisely the case where, like, you know, I hand you a teddy bear and you and you look at that teddy bear and and everyone who's ever owned it, you found that you find it. It was given to me by Ari Salvator three years ago. Yeah. And so on and so forth.
00:55:05:08 - 00:55:15:03
Sean Pinnock
That's part of the problem blockchain solves, right. Makes all of that much easier. Automated and decentralized yet didn't you guys you guys kept working with All right so to right after that.
00:55:15:03 - 00:55:38:18
Jeff Butler
Jeff Oh, absolutely. Ari Salvator, you know, he presided over the authorship of EverQuest related books and stuff like that. We forged a business relationship with him. You know, ultimately, I don't know how much you guys are aware of the darker side of free to play gaming. The fact that money, money laundering and terrorism has been involved over the years.
00:55:38:21 - 00:56:00:18
Jeff Butler
I mean, these are very real issues. And those issues, I mean, I brought them up when people started talking about free to play, I was like, Hey, wait a second. Isn't this isn't this a a textbook way to launder money? Right. You know, I go from a country where, you know, where we're not allowed to to commerce with that country.
00:56:00:23 - 00:56:27:03
Jeff Butler
And I buy a bunch of, you know, game cards and then move the money across international borders in ways that don't require any effort on the other side, because all digital transactions and goods. Right. So I buy $100,000 worth of materials and say let let's say even online. Right. And next thing you know, money is laundered as a result.
00:56:27:16 - 00:56:40:01
Jeff Butler
It's not it's not rocket surgery. We've got to guard against things like that. If we're going to create this incredible thing, we can't allow it to be destroyed from within. I bet we.
00:56:40:01 - 00:56:42:19
Sean Pinnock
Have to or the FBI will make us. So we're going to. We're going to have to.
00:56:42:19 - 00:56:55:06
Devin Becker
Yeah. Unfortunately, if the government doesn't like you, then suddenly you're a harbor for kiddy porn and terrorism and drugs and everything else, right? You're suddenly the New Silk Road or whatever it is. You just get labeled that way. And I think.
00:56:55:14 - 00:57:09:23
Sean Pinnock
If you have a pretty heavy handed moderation in the early days, especially, it's going to be a complicated thing because we are really trying to build democracy on this platform. There's going to if we go the distance, there's going to be all kinds of legislation built around this who who knows who knows where this is going to go.
00:57:10:15 - 00:57:10:22
Sean Pinnock
So.
00:57:11:13 - 00:57:42:07
Jeff Butler
You know, having having worked with the then world's largest massively multiplayer game, I can tell you the people who developed that game were not thinking about CPTPP. They weren't thinking about all the moderation problems that they were going to have in customer service. One of the reasons why I came on board, because I really played the crap out of Ultima Online and other games and I knew the problems that they were going to have with moderation, even volunteer moderation.
00:57:43:06 - 00:58:25:09
Jeff Butler
You know, the story goes and goes way back into interpersonal problems. And, you know, laws broke and all sorts of other crazy stuff. So having perspective will help us a lot. And we're going to have to extend that perspective into this future of gaming that we're talking about. Right. It's it's going to require a lot of very intelligent people sitting down and engineering tools, moderation, you know, structures that allow us to prevent all the bad stuff from happening and picking up technology that already exists and using it as a tool just makes sense.
00:58:25:19 - 00:58:28:01
Devin Becker
Appreciate using the titular line of the show by the way.
00:58:29:00 - 00:58:32:00
Nico Vereecke
Exactly. So we're here for Thanksgiving.
00:58:32:00 - 00:58:33:18
Jeff Butler
We're here and that's why we're here.
00:58:34:14 - 00:58:43:08
Nico Vereecke
And so final question, what's next for Avalon? What can we expect? And working people stay updated.
00:58:43:21 - 00:59:00:20
Sean Pinnock
Yep. So, you know, making animals, those take a long time and making this takes a long time as well. But we've been at it for about a year. We've built a pretty amazing team, about 50 people now. You know, I imagine by the time will ship will be over over a couple hundred at least. We know we had a press release recently.
00:59:00:20 - 00:59:17:20
Sean Pinnock
You can join our discord. You can you can find our Twitter at Avalon if you want to stay up to date with the most recent things. But look out for some big announcements later this year. We haven't shown you much that's on purpose, but there's a lot to show. We're going to we're going to be we're going to be dropping some jaws later this year.
00:59:17:23 - 00:59:19:14
Sean Pinnock
So look out, Look out.
00:59:19:19 - 00:59:23:03
Devin Becker
Can you come to those on the podcast first? So that was exclusive.
00:59:23:14 - 00:59:28:11
Nico Vereecke
And asking real questions like, yeah, good for that.
00:59:28:17 - 00:59:33:18
Jeff Butler
We'd love to loop back around with you guys frequently and talk about the stuff that we're currently.
00:59:33:19 - 00:59:36:07
Devin Becker
We'll be doing this on the Avalon platform right?
00:59:36:07 - 00:59:36:20
Sean Pinnock
Exactly.
00:59:37:22 - 00:59:39:22
Jeff Butler
We actually talk about that, right?
00:59:40:04 - 00:59:41:18
Sean Pinnock
That's actually just and.
00:59:44:06 - 00:59:56:23
Jeff Butler
It's it's something we initially discussed. We we are working toward actually having our our meetings and our collaboration in our tool.
00:59:57:15 - 01:00:03:09
Devin Becker
Got to dogfood it eventually we need that fogged out world right now you go to essentially and let's move on from this word out.
01:00:03:19 - 01:00:03:21
Nico Vereecke
The.
01:00:03:21 - 01:00:12:23
Sean Pinnock
Best deal between mayors circle and why DG and fogged I was going to drop in with the nuclear bomb and just take everyone else easy digital collectibles millions of dollars and loot they're going to be pretty savvy.
01:00:13:21 - 01:00:33:21
Nico Vereecke
Modern Massachusetts can finally put my bags to work. All right, good. Yep. Jeff and Sean, I want to thank you so for joining. This was amazing that you guys are building something really exciting and I can't wait to have you on again to talk about some more information. We could talk about a bit more about what you've already done and what you're going to do then.
01:00:33:21 - 01:01:00:11
Nico Vereecke
Thanks for asking the good questions here. Always appreciate you being here and Listener, thank you most of all for listening. If you made it here, really appreciate it. If you'd like to feel free to let us know, leave us like you're listening to this probably new week before GDC if you're going to be at GDC, we're doing a folk down meetup Thursday, ten m details to be confirmed and if you want to join that, it's actually like I made a even bright events.
01:01:00:11 - 01:03:07:01
Nico Vereecke
200 tickets sold out already. I don't know how, but if you join a discord and just being us will definitely get you it. All right. That was it. Thank you guys for joining and speak to you in the next episode. Joe.