Full transcript: Benjamin Charbit on London Real
3:00 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Benjamin Charbit, the former investment banker, Web3 entrepreneur, and game developer. You are the co-founder and CEO of Darewise Entertainment, where you and your team are building Life Beyond, a virtual world where players embark on a journey to build a new civilization. Life Beyond is pioneering a new genre of game using a unique play and earn model with the goal of offering users gameplay, governance, and monetization.
3:26 You are also the very first metaverse to be built on the Bitcoin ecosystem, a brand new possibility ushered in by the birth of ordinals or Bitcoin NFTs this year. Your early career was spent working in investment banking at Lazard before pursuing your passion for gaming at Ubisoft, where you served as game director on the hugely successful adventure game Assassin’s Creed. Last year, your company merged with Animoca Brands, with the ultimate goal of providing true ownership of digital assets and the power to create meaningful, interactive, and social experiences.
3:59 Benjamin, welcome to London Real. Thank you so much. It’s always amazing when you hear it from someone else. You’re like, wow, we did all of that? That’s great.
4:09 And you’re just getting warmed up. I just want to start by saying Life Beyond is one of our portfolio companies here at London Real Ventures. We are the world’s first media-powered investment firm. Our mission is to transform the world by investing in cutting-edge Web3 and AI companies while giving our partners marketing exposure across the London Real media platforms and academies. We heighten awareness, create customers, and build communities by leveraging our global audience and extensive network.
4:34 And Benjamin, we are beyond excited to be part of this journey with you. So let’s jump in. We were in Singapore just a few weeks ago, and everybody was buzzing about Life Beyond and the fact that you guys are the first metaverse to be built on the Bitcoin ecosystem. You and I were at the very first ordinal summit, and there was just a lot going on. There was a huge buzz.
4:57 Yatsu was in town. We did panels. What’s the reception been like, you know, since you guys did your major press release over this last month? Like, what are people saying about all of the things that you’re creating? I think what is really interesting to me today is that it was not so much.
5:17 We were training not to make it so much about us, but more about this revolution that is happening today in the crypto world, which is that Bitcoin is back in a way, because Bitcoin is now can become a utility blockchain. So when before Bitcoin was only about value transfer, thanks to ordinals that you mentioned, we can now host digital assets, and that opens a breadth of opportunity. So, day-wise, with Life Beyond, we’re kind of a vessel to bring the spotlight on this ecosystem that is growing.
5:56 And so, of course, we carry some big brand names with Animoca Brands. With what we did in the past, you mentioned Assassin’s Creed. So, it’s the kind of like mix of all of this that of course drew a lot of attention, and we’ve been busy right after this connecting mostly. Connecting with all of the stakeholders of the ecosystem right now who want to build together as a fantastic energy. I never experienced anything like that.
6:25 And is that the Bitcoin ecosystem where that energy comes from, that old school? Also, we were at that ordinals conference, and a bunch of people were saying, man, this feels like Bitcoin back in 2014 and 2016, where it was all about the developers and the creators. And I mean, I was there. There were guys with masks on and capes on, and it had that real developer buzz about it, as opposed to a lot of conferences these days seem to be these massive corporate booths and these polished CEOs.
6:53 It’s true. It’s very D-Gen. How would you define D-Gen for someone that doesn’t know that term? D-Gen is really someone who’s really deep down into it, all hands. Love every bit of it.
7:10 Just want to participate to every new development, whether it’s this new community, this new project. So it’s, I think D-Gen stands for degenerate. But it’s great. What it means basically is that people are extremely engaged, enthusiast about it, and they have this really strong desire to build together. What I think is, and hopefully we can entertain this for as long as possible, but it’s really this dynamic right now that it’s not about competition.
7:44 Maybe it’s because the space is not big enough to compete, or maybe it’s because of the core design of decentralization where this is built on the concept of network effect. The more we are, the more we’re contributing, the more we can benefit. And this is a very unique dynamic that you experience. And of course, being at the beginning, when it’s still humanly sized, it’s fantastic. And to me, I’ve been in the Web3 space since 2021, which is not that long, but it’s completely different.
8:26 And I just love it beyond what I could think of. You know, what excited us most about this project was I call it the perfect storm. So first of all, you guys have this massive gaming studio coming from Web2 AAA games, and you’re all in on this one project. So that’s massive. And the project itself is amazing.
8:47 We’ll talk about it shortly. Then you got Animoca behind you, okay? So you got the full force and might and cred of all of Animoca and their funding behind you to push this. And then on top of that, you’re going to be the first metaverse on this Bitcoin chain. And that’s a choice you made to take, you know, kind of your baby and say, we’re going to go all in on this.
9:08 And you’d make that choice and yeah, and everybody. And so when I first saw it, I was just like, yeah, wow, wow, and wow, you know, this has a beautiful amount of risk from the investment banking side. And risk can be a bad thing, but risk can be a beautiful thing as well. And it felt like, you know, there’s so many potentials to go right here. Someone said, this is potentially is like, you know, Ethereum back in, you know, 15 or 16 when it was just starting.
9:36 It could be something brand new. And there’s no one that has the scale to build such a big project on this right now. You know, it’s when you’re in finance, I remember, you know, Finance 101, you learn about the risk-reward relationship. You don’t want a higher level of reward. You need to take a huge amount of risk.
10:02 That’s a little bit what we’re doing here. But of course, not everyone is equipped the same way to face this level of risk. We are very lucky because we have this huge experience behind us. That is, of course, it’s an asset that we have today. We have this team, we have all this talent so we can accomplish things that are a bit more challenging for a smaller, more independent studio.
10:27 We have Animoco brands, you know, this, you know, fire power, this major powerhouse behind us that brings so much credibility, so much network, so much expertise. And we have our partner Horizon Labs as well, who built Apecoin, you know, one of the most successful fungible token on the market today that they did for the whole Boridé ecosystem. And they’re really bringing us what’s missing, which is really this technical savviness on fungible token, you know, running, like, because a token is a lot of things.
11:06 It’s legal, it’s infrastructure, it’s governance. They really help us with this. So, you know, we, I think we worked on the right setup to do something like this, which, again, will not only benefit us, but benefit the whole ecosystem. And that’s been, I think our main focus since the beginning is, because I think there’s no other way to succeed in Web3. It’s, of course, you’re going to, you run a business.
11:33 And so we’re, it’s not an NGO, we’re here to grow, create and grow a business. But it can only happen if you’re actively participating to the development of this network effect. Yeah, and Horizon Labs is incredible. And for people that don’t know, they created and launched AIP coin, which dropped in pretty terrible market conditions. I think it was the day of the Ukraine war started.
12:00 The crypto was coming down at the time and it instantly had some crazy, like five or eight billion dollar market cap. And it was the coin that they literally just airdrop to AIP holders that was engineered by Horizon Labs. And it was one of the biggest success stories of the year. And they are now working on, on your token and working in a very, very nascent ecosystem, which is the Bitcoin chain, which still is up in the air. And you got amazing people like Rob Viglione and our good friend, every Lauren that are working nonstop to create this.
12:34 And so again, on top of those other amazing things, you’ve got this like triple A team that’s going to drop this, this token. And, you know, I think when, when you do something, you have to, I mean, I’m at a point of my life where I just want to do things that really get me excited. And so it’s about the people, it’s about, you know, the community, it’s about of course the vision, what you’re trying to achieve. But here, there was just a good chemistry. When I, I remember when I pitched Rob the first time about this idea, you know, look, there’s something that, rather than building on Ethereum, let’s build the first metaverse ecosystem on Bitcoin.
13:18 And he’s an old Bitcoiner because actually Horizon was built, the Horizon chain is basically the same tokenomics as Bitcoin with additional features. So he has always embraced the Bitcoin opportunity as soon as, as far as he goes in the crypto space. So it was instant. Like at the end of the first call, he said, I want to be in. So yeah, it’s a, it’s an interesting time.
13:46 You know, you’re, I think you’re kind of a, chasing this one, you know, in your life that eventually you’ll feel like you’re in the moment. You know, you resonate with all the frequencies and you’re there, you know, it’s manifesting. So this is really what’s happening. I’m very lucky. Now, of course, we have to deliver.
14:03 Execution is, of course, 90% of the job. And that’s why we also brought all these partners, but I’m extremely confident. Yeah, no, it’s exciting stuff. Let’s talk about the Bitcoin ecosystem because I’ve had a lot of Bitcoin maxis on this show and they believe that it’s all about Bitcoin and everything else is, you know, an imposter. And all of a sudden you’ve got ordinals, which this year when OpenSea’s market share went down 98% and NFT’s dropped 98%, you have a couple hundred million of these brand new Bitcoin NFT ordinals trading on this chain that usually it’s, you know, it’s digital gold.
14:44 It’s a silver value. It never entertained any type of programmable piece. If you went to Bitcoin Miami the last few years, you don’t say the word NFT there. You get beaten up in the bathroom, you know? That’s what it’s like.
14:55 And so, and yet the Bitcoin ecosystem is kind of embracing some of these ordinals. I think somebody said there are 40 million non-zero Bitcoin wallets out there. I mean, it’s just a massive ecosystem. 44 million. 44 million.
15:11 What should people know about that Bitcoin chain? On one hand, you got maxis that say leave it alone, but actually behind the scenes, a lot of them are very interested in this protocol. And again, it’s 44 million in wallets, which is massive. You’ve got the Bitcoin ETF that’s probably here in six months, regardless of what Gensler wants to say, which could bring in, some people are saying, 600 billion immediately, which is the entire market cap of Bitcoin. I mean, you have potentially just tens of millions of users that now could want to do something else while you play a game.
15:43 So what are some of the challenges and things that people should know about it? So to understand, you know, Bitcoin is really the prestige chain. It’s the initial consensus layer where you can perform transaction in an extremely secure way.
16:02 This part has been undisputed, you know, and that’s why you’re talking about $600 billion, $600 million of market cap. This is why you’re talking about the ETF and all this, because no one is questioning that Bitcoin is the chain where you want your most valuable transaction to happen. Yeah, it’s never gone down in 13 years. Fully decentralized. It’s never stopped working ever.
16:26 And you know, it’s been hacked in by every organization. I would say every terrorist organization in the world has tried to hack Bitcoin, including the CIA. And yet it’s still up. It’s more reliable than your banking system, than Facebook, than Google, than anything. And everyone agrees now it is digital gold.
16:43 It is the choice for storing value in a digital way. It is, right? All of the major asset managers in the world are now lining up to push their ETF. So it’s a no-brainer. No one is challenging this point anymore.
16:59 It’s a given. But people started to think about this idea. There is, what if we can bring utility? So, value transfer, done. What about utility?
17:13 Where we could actually store other type of assets and now run applications on top of this. Exactly like Ethereum has been doing it. And that has been made possible through the Ordinals Protocol, started in February this year. That basically makes it possible to inscribe code, text, images, any form of assets onto a Satoshi, which is the smallest unit of a Bitcoin. And that, indeed, to simplify this, kind of makes it possible now to have NFTs or similar to on Bitcoin.
17:52 So this is a complete revolution because now on the ecosystem that has the largest liquidity, that has the largest number of users, you mentioned the 44 million wallets, now we can create utility. We can serve all of this user base with utility. This is a major revolution. It’s probably the biggest revolution in the crypto space. And the reception so far has been positive.
18:20 So the reception is interesting because it’s obviously positive from a large number of players. Except for a very small group of ultra maxis who don’t like this because the more we use the chain, the higher their fees are. But we have to understand that fees are not a punishment. Fees are a way to reward the validators, the individuals or organizations that are making this network running. They are operating the network.
18:52 So when you’re a Bitcoin miner, you are actually extremely interested in ordinals. If we look at the recent stats, it’s like 80% of the transaction on the Bitcoin blockchain now that are driven by ordinals. So we have a huge surge of transaction and a surge of fees. $50 million worth of fees have been generated so far for the Bitcoin miners. And again, we have to see it as a natural flywheel of network effect.
19:21 You know, it’s everybody’s benefiting from this. It’s not because there’s a fee that there’s a problem. The fee creates opportunities. So now it’s about building the right type of experiences, of services, of products so that more users can adopt it because we’re, of course, very far from mass adoption. Yeah.
19:43 I want to talk about the game itself. But before we do that, I want to talk about web three games versus web two games. Now, you come from this old school gaming world like Assassin’s Creed, where you make a game that people want to play. They want to play because they love it. They think about it when they sleep.
20:02 They think about it when they eat and they want to play this game. Now, web three typically came at games from a different angle. They came at games saying, guess what, you can earn this or you can stake this or you can move this piece from one place to another. And I’d say most people probably agree. We haven’t yet seen a triple A web three game.
20:22 We haven’t seen a game that shows us that it can be done on web three. And so web three games have gotten a lot of criticism and to a point where people say, you don’t even get it. You guys are a bunch of DeFi people that are trying to bring your financing stuff into a gaming world that you know nothing about. What are your thoughts on that? And yeah, coming from that world of the Assassin’s Creed, what would you say?
20:45 I can’t really challenge this. Most of that critics is relevant. We started even creating this world, GameFi. The problem is just that there’s no issue in the opportunity to earn money by playing. The problem is if you designed the whole experience on this.
21:10 Because earning by playing is actually a very old mechanic. We’ve seen that for several years. If you played World of Warcraft, already 15 years ago, you could buy gold from people on the black market. You could hire other players for power leveling services. So they would take your character, play for you and move your character from level 40 to level 60, which would be very grindy, would take some time, some skills and you just wanted the benefit of having the bigger armor.
21:42 So that’s obviously a natural mechanic. Some people were doing esports. Some people were creating content. So turning your game experience into a revenue stream, that’s always been the case. The problem was the infrastructure was just not there and you had to do it on the black market.
21:58 So that was illegal most of the time against their terms of services of these games and extremely complicated to run. What Web3 is bringing is just expanding the opportunities. The fact that now the assets are stored on chain. So on a decentralized database that anyone can access first makes it truly your property. So it’s a true digital ownership that you have now that the asset is on chain and it creates a breadth of opportunities for third parties and other developers and other service providers to connect to the game experience and add stuff on top of it.
22:40 So the problem is not Web3. The problem is that, of course, those who saw an opportunity were early joiners in the crypto world. They were mostly crypto bros and it’s true DeFi operators or people that were more coming from this culture than from the gaming culture. And so the design, you know, according to what they knew, building games and high quality games takes several years. When you build a new IP, it’s probably five to eight years.
23:09 When you build a sequel of an existing IP, three to five years. And I’m talking about, I’m talking for AAA games. So, well, if you just do the math, well, these games are in development. They’re coming. There are several of them that are in development.
23:23 There are some that are already out in like an early form. So it’s coming. We just have to wait a little bit longer and you will see exactly what we saw in the free-to-play market around 2011, 12, 13, where people were completely dismissing these type of experiences. Until Clash of Clans on mobile, League of Legends on PC and people just completely abandoned their prejudice against the business model and they just focused on the product. This is exactly what’s going to happen.
23:58 Okay, so back then, all the traditional gaming studios look at free-to-play and they’re like, what are you doing? You should be selling your video game for a price. You can’t give it away for free. You’ll never make money. And those people said, no, wait a second.
24:09 This is our freemium model. 1% of the players will pay money and we’re going to make money on that. No one believed it could happen and then the rest is history. The rest is history. And it’s funny, you say five to eight years to develop a triple-A game.
24:22 I mean, Jesus, five to eight years in crypto is like three cycles. It’s true and that’s probably one of the issues that the community is used to a pace of development in the web tree space and it’s so different. It’s just hard for them to accept that no, actually, these things take weeks or months. Years and several of them. Right.
24:45 I mean, you and I both spend time in Wall Street investment banking and to watch the crypto market compared to say a cycle in the real financial markets. I mean, it’s crazy. I mean, in the last two years, I mean, you had the amount of financial crises and scandals in the actual financial market of say the last 15 years. I mean, biblical proportions what happened in the last two years. And so, again, even by financial market standards, the crypto world is just highly accelerated.
25:17 The volatility is high. Everything happens faster. The booms are faster. The busts are faster. The characters, the developments.
25:26 And so you take that and lay it over, I guess, a gaming ecosystem. I mean, eight years ago was 2015. I mean, there was nothing going on in crypto except for Bitcoin. There were no stable coins back then. There was very little development.
25:39 So in your mind, it’s just about catching up, really. Yes, but it also means that this is why I love gaming so much as a big part of this ecosystem. You build the games. You don’t build the game for Web3. And so whatever you’re building is extremely resilient because regardless of if the market goes up or down and this insane volatility, this fundamentals are here.
26:06 People will come and play this game because it’s fun and they will stick to it because they like the game play. They are engaged in the core game loop and not because they want to earn money. Some will, for sure. And what is great is that we’re unlocking the opportunity. It’s a little bit like saying when you look at the stock market, you have a lot of different persona.
26:28 You have hedge funds who are very short-term. You have asset managers who are a bit more long-term. You have retail investors. But you can’t just focus on one category. You need everybody.
26:40 They have different objectives, different perspective, but you need the liquidity brought by the hedge fund. You need the long, you need the people holding because holding creates the increase in the share price. So this is exactly what’s going to happen in Web3 gaming as well. It’s not just going to be games for speculators or a game for players. It’s a rich ecosystem where all of these players, all of these actors will contribute and benefit.
27:13 We’re always going back to the same kind of framework. And when people understand that, everything becomes really crystal clear. But we need more accessible use cases for it to become a really, like an accepted standard. What’s interesting about you is that you didn’t start off making a Web3 game. No.
27:34 I think it was a Web2 game. Yeah, absolutely. That’s fascinating because you’ve got to be one of the few in this space that started off that way. Why did you change your mind? Was it when you looked at that concept of digital property rights?
27:48 It’s multiple things. But first, when we started the development of Life Beyond, which is very early 2018, Ethereum really started to take off after crypto kitties so late 2017 when the chain started to get clogged and people are like, wow, we can do NFTs and smart contracts and that can create communities. But it was not that massively adopted as it is today. I mean, we still have more to do. So it was not even an option for us.
28:20 What we cared about when we started the project was the metaverse play. And for us, metaverse meant we had massively multiplayer online games, MMOs, like World of Warcraft. What is the next generation? And the next generation for us was games where I can be the hero, but I’m no longer limited to being the hero. I can also be the farmer.
28:41 I can be the merchant. I can be the truck driver in those worlds. Because we started to see that people really cared about living a meaningful digital existence. And especially if we were able to bring them in this fictional world. So we started to build this.
28:56 But of course, as we kind of pulled the string, we realized a lot of the complexity that is behind it. And one of the complexity is that we can’t rely on our own development capacity to create everything. We needed people to be able to participate easily. So that was the first reason. Because now that your assets are on chain, it becomes permissionless.
29:19 Anyone can start building a service on top of your experience without reaching out to you. They can just do it. First benefit. The second one is indeed the development of this culture of digital property right. As blockchain, and especially with Ethereum, people start to question this idea that yes, though most of these things are not my property, my data on Facebook is not my property.
29:48 And what if now I can become my property thanks to blockchain? I actually want the same for games. And so second opportunity, actually people want to have a true ownership of their assets. And the third one, was that of course, building such a vast world like Life Beyond relied on having a player-driven economy. But a truly player-driven economy needs a whole decentralized infrastructure where anyone can participate, we can sell anywhere, and you’re not locked into my ecosystem, my marketplace, my store, and you can go anywhere, you can trade easily without going through it.
30:31 So that’s how, you know, one thing after another, it just became such an obvious move. And so in 2020, we really started to look at it and early 21 decided to press the button. Okay. And around then, I think, is that when Animoca decided to take an interest in you? Several months after, of course, as we, now that we were really steering Towerheads Web3 and blockchain, I had the chance to meet with Yat and that’s, you know, how this whole thing started.
31:03 Right. And he bought a piece of you guys. A large piece. A large piece. Well, then he bought a bigger piece.
31:09 They control the company. They control. Okay. Then he started off a small piece and then they… No, that was a single shot.
31:14 Just a single shot. Okay. And he really connected with your ethos and what you guys were all about and what you were a part of. Yeah, because I think I had never been so, you know, drawn to like a narrative. I remember before meeting Yat, but for the first time, I started to read what he had published online and I really invited everybody to read because to understand it’s the true ethos of Web3.
31:39 And it’s, for me, there was not even Web3 in my mind. I was just thinking about, you know, digital reality, digital property, right? Living online, you know, this something that I have been doing. I’m 39 now. I’ve been doing this since I was 13, 14, but it was much more geeky, more challenging than it is today.
32:00 And I felt so connected to the whole thesis that it was developing that the first conversation was very intense. We were really talking a lot about this. And so the rest was very natural at a time where we were not trying to sell the company. So it was very interesting that things developed this way, but I just had this feeling. I remember very well and talking with my co-founder say, listen, I want to be part of this.
32:29 Like what these guys are developing with Animaker Brands is insane. And of course, it is big now. It’s 450 portfolio companies, 10 or 12 subsidiaries. But back then in 2021, it was actually much smaller. So already, it felt like just a boat that I wanted to ride with.
32:50 Yeah. So I first had Yat on the show in 21, when quite frankly, I didn’t understand the metaverse. I just didn’t get it, you know? We’d just gone heavy into crypto and DeFi in May of 21. And by August, September, I was just like, yeah, what is it?
33:06 And on a remote interview, I finally got it. He explained it to me. I think he said something simple. Like he said, your WhatsApp group is a metaverse. It’s digital communication.
33:15 Exactly. Don’t try to think it’s got a headset or it’s this or it’s that. It’s just digital communication in all different ways, shapes, and forms. And then he went on to talk about the open metaverse versus the closed metaverse. And Yat is a very, you know, he’s a very, he’s got incredible vision about digital property rights.
33:35 His concept of digital colonialism where they basically, you know, we’ve given away our digital property and they sell it back to us. A lot like the British empire was famous. They would go into a new territory, take all of their natural resources, and then sell it back to the natives. Like we did that. And it’s happening with our data.
33:53 And, you know, Yat is a guy who can speak very evenly keeled, but there’s one point in that interview when I asked him about Facebook and he said, Brian, we have to fight to make sure that the metaverse stays open. And I am very concerned about a closed metaverse, one that is owned by a company like Meta. And he’s like, that’s not what any of us wants. And so that led to subsequent conversations. And Yat is always here talking about digital property rights.
34:18 And we end up talking about capitalism and socialism and Marxism. And it’s really about life. It’s not about putting a headset on or playing some kid game that your kid plays on the iPad. This is literally about our future as humanity. If you don’t own your digital property and you don’t own your freedom in this digital world, then we all live in digital worlds these days.
34:40 I’m sure Yat quoted George Washington, like he does it very often, very rightfully, which is that there is no freedom without property rights. And there is no digital freedom without digital property rights. It’s exactly the same idea. I think really, what we have to understand is, first, the metaverse is not a game world. It’s not a 3D world.
35:04 It’s a concept. It’s a digital layer where you can have a meaningful life. How you define it is kind of personal. To me, a meaningful life is a meaningful social and economic life. That’s how I define it.
35:19 So whether I have a very rich social life where I can really interact, communicate, and so Twitter for me is part of the metaverse, or a place where I can earn a revenue, where I can really create some form of assets. That is the metaverse. And so it can take multiple forms. It’s this network of destinations that are connected where I can move freely from one to another. But the question is, I just said freely, and this is where the open metaverse is really different.
35:49 In the open metaverse, I am really free to, because I own every piece that is related to me. While this is not true in the closed metaverse, on the social platform, where I can’t really take this data away from them. I can’t move this data from one place to another. Sometimes it’s facilitated because I can have an authentication service that allows me to connect with the same identity from one place to another. But doing so, I’m actually giving away more freedom
36:25 But in a very convenient way for me. So the open metaverse is very interesting because it’s open to anyone. It doesn’t belong to anyone. And you will never hear Yat or myself talking about, we’re building the metaverse. We never believe in this.
36:41 We’re building parts of the infrastructure, some destinations of the metaverse, some protocols of the metaverse. But we’re just one of the many actors. And really doing it in a capacity or with this intention to collaborate. And that really takes us to something even deeper, which is a new form of capitalism, which is almost like what I like to call a community-based capitalism, where the network grows. When we’re all part of the network, we’re all in this community that is running this network.
37:17 And so we all grow together. That’s very interesting. It’s very different from socialism or communism. It’s not about just a fair, like an equal distribution of the wealth created. But it’s more about just the fact that as a member of this network, if I contribute, I can benefit.
37:35 Yeah, it’s almost like capitalism 2.0 in a way. And we’re seeing it with Web3. We’re seeing it where you create these ecosystems and then you actually get kind of an equity stake in that ecosystem. And then you have governance of that ecosystem with the DAO, but you can also still reap the rewards of your contribution. So like you said, it’s not like a socialism thing where everyone gets an equal part.
37:59 You can still create real value there, but also you can be part of that network. It’s a real graduation of humanity kind of moving from Web2 to Web3. And it’s really a new way of seeing the relationship between all of these stakeholders. If you look at the value chain, you know, before where you had kind of this zero sum game, now we redefine this whole mechanic where everyone is a stakeholder and can actively participate. And this really creates a virtuous experience, a very virtuous circle because now, again, if my partner benefits, my partner grows, I benefit from that growth.
38:44 So it’s a different way of seeing competition. It’s a different way of seeing, like, landscapes. And that’s why probably I get so excited, you know, when I go out there and meet with other companies and they meet these guys. Like, I think of one who, of one of your previous guests, for instance, Sami, the CEO of Cross The Age. Yeah.
39:08 Like, I love Cross The Age. I love Sami. I love what they’re doing. And to me, the more they grow, the better it is. And while in traditional gaming, we’re like, oh, we’re fighting for people’s time.
39:20 So if they grow, they take more time, and Netflix is taking time. For me, it’s completely different because again, we have ways to align all of our interests thanks to the network. Right. And the fact that people can move their property easily, everybody can win. Absolutely.
39:37 Yeah. And that’s probably why, like you said, the Bitcoin ecosystem is welcoming this in because it just means more development, more eyeballs, more everything. Quite frankly, it reminds me a little bit when I started podcasting. You know, and I had to change my Wall Street mentality quite a bit. So when I started podcasting, I had a podcast, the Joe Rogan inspired, and then Joe Rogan invited me on his podcast in the first year and it blew me away.
39:58 And I was like, why is he inviting me on his podcast? Because surely some of his audience is going to start watching me. And the old model is, I’m going to, you know, these are my viewers and you’re going to take away from my viewers. And I realized, no, no, no, in this ecosystem, everybody, we want more people here. We want to open up.
40:17 We want just, everybody can contribute. Let’s just have a big conversation and everybody wins. So I had to shift my mentality. I used to call it peace and love in London Real. And sometimes the BBC would say, can we interview your guests before they go on your show?
40:29 And my tendency was like, no, get away. And I’d be like, okay, come over to my studio. You can do it. This is a whole new mentality. Do you remember these marketing strategies or marketing principles before where like, you have to keep your user within your ecosystem.
40:43 So you would never get them to click on something that would like pop another page or you would want to keep them and integrate everything inside. This is exactly the opposite. And it has a name now. It’s been terrorized by marketing experts called Gross Loops. And this idea of, which is exactly what you did with the Joe Rogan example, which is, you’re bringing utility to your user base and to his user base.
41:11 And so together, everybody wins because now I have access to another content that I didn’t know about. But thanks to you as a vessel, as a proxy for this, now I also expand the utility that I’m getting. And more people start listening to podcasts and then they tell their friends about it and then it just grows the audience. And so it’s just a different way of thinking. Also, it’s a healthier way of thinking.
41:39 It’s just more about this community. And how can we all win together? And it’s interesting because I think people used to always say, oh, whatever community driven is like socialism or communism. And of course, it was carrying so much prejudice because of the historical events. People were just chasing this away, like really dismissing it.
42:02 But we’re not even talking about this. We’re talking about the fact that there is a new form of capitalism, which is not about dominating. And I think if you go back to the real definition of capitalism in your economics book, you actually see that, yes, it was not about dominating. It was about getting your capital to work and return you something. Yeah.
42:25 This is exactly what we can do with this new form. Yeah, it’s also an amazing information system as well. And it can efficiently allocate that capital and make it grow even the best. So yeah, it isn’t always about that. Let’s talk about the game because on top of all these other things that we were talking about, when I heard the word transform mentioned in Life Beyond, again, that piqued my interest even more because here at London Real, we’re all about transformation.
42:50 I just showed you our mission statement on the wall, which says we’re here to create a mass scale transformation of humanity into a fully empowered, conscious and cooperative species. And so we’re big on trying to do the right thing for humanity. And when I started learning more about Life Beyond, it was very similar. Well, you wanted people to go on this journey and also transform themselves. And we also just spoke just a few minutes ago where you said, you know, we can go out into the planetary world or we can go deeper kind of inside ourselves.
43:24 And you believe that the metaverse and the digital experience is going to be a big part of that. So what is Life Beyond all about? Life Beyond is a big adventure to build a new civilization on an alien planet. So that’s the narrative part, right? But of course, what it means is it’s kind of a metaphor to build a new civilization in a digital reality.
43:50 We’re dressing it up as a sci-fi experience and it’s a sci-fi game. But what I believe is that it’s going to illustrate that it’s possible to meaningfully live online in a digital reality. So think about you can be in this world where you can farm your land, you can run a business, you can work for a company, you can attend a venue and an event at a venue. All of these things you can do in this digital world that are this time going to feel like I’m not just playing a game, I’m really living something.
44:31 And that’s why it’s called Life Beyond that’s why it’s taking you really far, far and that’s why we do it on chain because thanks to NFTs, fungible token, which is basically a cryptocurrency, now you have these tools to really feel that it definitely has an impact. Of course, the economical part is easy because now you’re like this can be turned into money, into fiat money that I can US dollars or British pound that I can spend. But I believe that a lot of us have actually already been experiencing things like that but not at a massive scale.
45:14 Only if you were really invested into this digital world, digital reality. And so for a long time, we used to be called no life, people who were stuck in these realities. But what, of course, people understand now is that it can have a meaningful impact on your life and you get to socialize, you get to create a very strong relationship with people that actually end up maybe sometime mattering more to you because you share a common interest. We actually already live more than 50% of our time in the digital world.
45:50 Whether you’re on WhatsApp, on Twitter, social media, doing email, on video conference. We are there. It’s just that right now, the form factor is not the best. You know, you’re on a flat screen in this Zoom call but we’re getting there. And in the way I see things, maybe in 10, 15 years from now, we’ll have the technology to really get you extremely immersed.
46:16 Just two weeks ago or a week ago, we saw the representation of what it could look like when you put a headset and now it really feels like we are facing each other you’re in 3D but I see all of the details. Of course, there’s the headset. There are so many things right now that go a little bit in the way for a very enjoyable experience but we’ll get there. Life Beyond will be one of the destination to show the way and where we can start building some very meaningful things.
46:46 Are you going to tell us much about what’s going to happen in the game or? Yeah, I mean a little bit. And when it happens as well. So when in our physical world will be at some point in 2024 in the world we are 100 years from now where we discover access to this very remote planet and remote location and we go on the planet and enter into this journey which is a cycle kind of a cycle of development that goes from pioneering on the planet which is a world full of opportunities but also a dangerous world that we have to pacify that we have to secure before we can start settling build the foundation of our community our presence on this world also unveil a lot of mysteries because a former alien civilization used to live there with a very advanced technology so there are a lot of things to discover and eventually we can now expand into more complex more sophisticated societies on the planet.
47:54 That’s a massive journey that we have ahead that I hope will take us 10, 20, maybe 30 years in this world. Wow, is this what AAA guys do? They plan out 30 years in advance. I think when you combine AAA with online now because AAA for a long time was a very single player content driven experience that you would just consume at home like a blockbuster movie but of course now because we’re in this era of being connected being together with how Gen Z is experiencing things we’re bringing a lot more of synchronous experience inside and this is where now the new revolution in gaming is happening.
48:37 You always had an artificial intelligence storyline in your game, right? That was always part of what was happening in the background? Well you always have because the first because of course non-playing characters are powered by AI in this world and that’s been going for some time but they used to be extremely scripted which is fine when you play the game once and then you’re done and you know it’s a fire and forget experience but now that you want a real and living and breathing world they have to be real they have to feel like they’re not really just simulated but that they are authentic so of course bringing in now these new AI generative AI revolution is an important thing a second reason is purely production related which is it’s a daunting task to create worlds like this and if you only rely on your own capacity to create this content you end up on a treadmill that you can never keep up with so bringing in either you know content like generative AI to facilitate or player driven content player created content you know user generated content then now you have tools to have a world that can kind of live in on its own which is where we want to be eventually and this world’s going to be on kind of 24 seven right oh yeah absolutely it’s a single shard world so there is no concept of servers where you are here but you cannot play with your friend because he or she would be on a different server we are all in the same world together wow and like you said
50:20 There’s lots of things going on so you can be farming you can be doing all these other tasks and also be the main character on an adventure on a journey and there’s going to be a lot of sub communities that can build in life beyond I could have a London Real or a community there and also the I hope so I hope to see that totally see us not doing that so and so that’s that’s how it works which isn’t how normally people would think of a game right well because usually you you play a character that was created for you but this time you are you’re the main character of your own story the the world is a playground for you to create whatever narrative you’re after who do you dream to be and what is surprising is that of course people think initially or we could used to think people wanted to be a hero but we’ve seen that after 15 years in the games industry that there are a lot of other player stories that are very interested to a lot of players there are five million people who buy farming simulators farming simulators every single year so five million people who just dream about farming their land with the latest tractors the latest machines isn’t that wild it’s I think it’s not it’s actually not that surprising it’s like a human instinct to leave something else you know okay when I think the what is the fun if you’re already an investment banker what is the fun to be an investment banker when you role play you already know that role but what if you can play other roles
51:56 We’ve always done that since we’ve you know when you’re a child you put on other costumes you explore this one and this one and why people like to play games why people like to watch movies for escapism and it can take multiple forms it’s not just about being the one with all the big guns and destroying everything we know now that people love the sims animal crossing and actually it makes me happy that the world is like that you know and that we’re not just about the very form of like basic form of action but that we also can entertain our community with so many different type of you know stories and they’re not just this power treatment right and so your games can incorporate all of that yes it will take time of course to get there because we’re talking about something that’s never been done before in terms of scope but we we know how to do this because we have built some of the most complex games in the past and because of the model and because it’s on chain because the the players are not just consumers but stakeholders we can now take this kind of bet that even you know one of the largest publisher in the world would just not do because the initial investment would be too crazy for them because they would of course wait for the whole game to be released to be ready before launching it monetizing it they would have you know stay shareholder they would be very careful about their share price so they would just wait until it’s whole
53:29 It’s very it’s completely ready which would probably involve like investments of like 100 million dollars several hundreds our approach is very different where we we don’t need to have the full experience I don’t even know what the full experience means because it will keep growing over time what we needed is the first chapter which is the pioneering experience okay now if people are really interested how would they start their experience with life beyond can they like sign up so when things happen and I think there’s some timeline of events I think humans kind of land on the planet first and they just crashed they just couple of weeks ago that happened yeah okay they crashed on the planet they crashed on the planet two weeks ago they crashed but they were just they weren’t intending to go there so the spaceship was actually back in orbit so we had already a long journey that started a year ago so we the first expedition went on the planet and this is when we had our first alpha play test and so the players went and explored the world they were met with an insane resistance from some entities in the world we don’t really understand what they are are they like fauna or are they kind of aliens technology or alien creatures in any case we got pushed back and now this first group of pioneer went back in the spaceship the spaceship was orbiting and it crashed now everybody is stuck in the in the spaceship on the planet in what we call the hub right now
55:05 Which is an area of the world of the of the of the spaceship you can go on the website playlifebeyond.com sign up download the game and you can already explore that explore the hub there are some gameplay some lore that you can explore and these are earthlings that have gone to this other planet what’s this planet like? is it what’s it like? like Mars? no no it’s a Dolos the name of the planet is Dolos it’s an alien planet but it’s a planet where we can live it’s different it’s it doesn’t look like earth it has a different type of vegetation the color is different but it still runs on similar principles like the principle of third mode dynamics that we that drive so many things gravity has oxygen so we have the same type of mechanics but we will reveal a few specificities over time that are very interesting and that will also create some very interesting game mechanics the point is not to recreate just another version of earth I think that when we have the opportunity to create you know to live in a digital reality I don’t get super excited about the idea of oh I’m just going to go to New York but a digital New York right and then this game ultimately is going to lead to deeper introspection maybe connecting with people on a different level yes okay thank you for bringing it up because it’s been a very strong you know like soul searching for all of us we come from a background of developing these triple A games and a lot of them are very violent
56:46 You know we worked on games like The Division, Assassin’s Creed they’re fantastic game but they’re very much built around this high level of action we wanted to we love this type of game they’re they’re very fun to play but we wanted to try something different it was not easy to be honest we tried to remove completely combat we couldn’t really find the fun but at least what we have is a couple of things the first thing is there is no player versus player gameplay but you cannot aggress another player the second thing is that the world is actually creating a series of challenges that you can only overcome by collaborating and we’re really hoping that doing so people start to also get unconsciously you know a form of education that it’s interesting you know when we do this together we actually perform better but it’s still a very open world a very open sandbox where you can take some decision that can actually damage the world but when you damage the world you pay the price you might lose some resources you might start to see your ecosystem getting poorer and poorer over time again this is another opportunity to potentially you know very suddenly introduce this idea to our to our player so we’re trying a series of experimentation like that that we hope will show that or will lead to like some really good results in terms of people being more conscious about things we know that gamification has always been a very interesting vessel for this
58:23 So we’ll see interesting gosh games are games are different than when I was a kid let’s just say that you know two nights ago my six-year-old got me to install Roblox on my phone and we were playing together now my six-year-old he can talk an hour straight about the latest game I think it’s scary Larry too and like literally sometimes he’ll just talk straight for 30 minutes explain everything that’s going on and there’s a golden pizza and a rainbow pizza I’m DMing him now on the app and he’s just a madman in there he knows all the stories he knows how to hook the points up he’s creating worlds in there and it’s like this is like when I was a kid this is like movies and games and culture and news all rolled up in one I mean it’s literally like it’s teaching him about life and he’s creating it along the way I guess this is what gaming is right and this is the future of gaming and communication I mean today you know gaming is the largest largest entertainment largest media in the world so it’s obviously it has over it overruns our world today so we have to accept this but it does it for good reason because it’s very engaging and it’s also developing let’s not hide against you know there are also of course drawbacks and we have to be careful like for anything that should never be consumed in excess but the opportunity is fantastic you have a six-year-old I have a six-year-old my daughter Liv and she plays Animal Crossing she didn’t know how to read
1:00:04 When she started but that became a good driver a good reason for her to read because she’s interacting with all these characters and she was always asking us her mother and myself to read you know we’re like well how about you read because now you have a good reason to read not to say that she can do it on her own entirely now but she starts to pick it up she also really started to connect you know a very form of basic rule that if I do this then I get that I can participate to this I can craft this thing by assembling pieces just some very basic mechanics that of course are so natural to us they were not for back then a five-year-old she and again it’s a very positive game it’s very nice it’s very friendly she really I saw her being engaged and asking a very interesting question and testing thing and understanding that you know she can fish and she can collect things from this thing create other things it’s super interesting and of course I’m talking about the very basic I think we could go so far so beyond amazing time to be a child and be alive and again you’ve got like iPads we didn’t have iPads and we were kids so you didn’t have these devices where you could intuitively dive into that universe and like learn in that interactive way and it’s just a fascinating time and I really got a big window into the reality of my boys and it’s going to be a way we can communicate together now listen I remember I had this fantasy you know where I thought
1:01:43 This is probably how one day I will be at home and I’m going to be on my phone and we will be on our land and life beyond and this is where I have my property and this is a property that I share with my family with my wife with my kids and I’m on my phone I’m doing something and I see my son my son who’s now who’s four now but I don’t know maybe he’ll be 16 and I was really fantasizing about talking to him and be like what are you doing I thought you were going to your friend and he’s like yeah I’m in a taxi but you know I’m in the I’m building this thing right now and we this is just bringing us closer and we’re sharing something you know this is our digital reality where there is no physical limitation we might not be in the same place but we can still feel close during the pandemic for instance I have a lot of friends who a lot from banking and from college who live you know in different locations in the US and London in Brazil and Paris we were that the playing online games was going to like going to a bar you know this is where we would meet because we could not meet physically and we knew that at this point everyone with wives and kids or family it would just not happen like they did before we might miss each other physically once a year but we could actually talk to each other in this world every single week that really brought us to be close and we entertain this we’ve entertained this for a long time so I see the potential
1:03:18 And it’s always been like this to me because it’s not a new thing that was already going like this 20-30 years ago we already had this online world they were just less accessible than they are today especially now that you can rent them on any device Benjamin what’s the future? You know we’ve got one well we’ve got one group of people that are literally looking after the stars and we need to settle on Mars and another group of people saying that we’re going to go we’re going to go deeper inside inside ourselves and learn more about what it means to be human and connect more deeply with other people like is that the future of this species and is the metaverse whatever that means going to help facilitate that like what do you see? What is human?
1:04:05 What is man’s greatest adventure? Is it Mars? Or is it into his soul? We need both because you cannot just explore Mars or explore go beyond our physical world without a way to bring people to overcome the distance we will not all go to Mars together we will not all travel together and we still want to entertain a very strong form of social bond so this digital reality will be a way to facilitate this and at the same time we need to
1:04:45 Connect in these worlds we need opportunities we still need to this is the human nature to want to explore to want to go further I think as soon as we start to accept that this is over we’ll lose a little bit of ourselves if we think that Elon Musk is a very visionary leader and I like to believe so he’s actually supporting both directions he’s a big player in the first one with SpaceX he’s also a big in the second one when you’re a link so there will be a combination that’s how I see the world and that’s really what makes me so excited about it I don’t know if I will get to enjoy both parts but I think that this is where eventually we go Do you think Neuralink is a way of us going deeper into our soul or understanding ourselves or being able to communicate on another level because right now how do we communicate we make funny noises out of our mouth right we draw things we build digital worlds we make music that’s how we communicate with each other right probably a pretty poor form of getting what’s in my brain and do what’s in your brain right I think that the tool will be like you know Neuralink will be a way to actually share all of the things that you mentioned but in a much more immersive way but I because when you think about telepathy for instance but it’s still taking the form of a language you’re still communicating using things that you can relate with maybe you’ll be able to express to share emotions and that I don’t even know
1:06:25 What it feels like you know what kind of a we went in front of the gong together and that’s a very unusual way of actually communicating you feel something but you can’t really describe it it’s different from just hearing or touching something how do I communicate this to someone else? That is really what I’m looking forward to experience to experiencing but overall what I like is that we’ll get to a level of immersion that is going to be fascinating especially because right now you know we no one really enjoy going on the zoom call let’s be honest you know it’s easy but if we could be in the same room we would rather do this while eventually we’ll be able to have the exact same feeling and experience which also can be scary because then how do I make the difference between physicality like the real physicality and the digital one maybe we’re not in the same room right now maybe we are in the simulation and this is where the blockchain is again becoming interesting because the blockchain will be the only place where I can store like a form of signature you know an authentication certificate or things that I can check make sure that this is actually happening this is real this is not a construct because remember that it’s immutable remember that it’s secure there’s nothing there’s no other database system no other infrastructure centralized infrastructure that can deliver and guarantee this exciting times what’s your biggest challenge as as CEO right now
1:08:20 I mean you have a big project to deliver we have so many but this is what makes it so interesting don’t seem stressed no I am not stressed I’m excited I’m thrilled I think I’m very I feel very lucky to be in this position to be experiencing all of this especially in those time but I would say that of course this Bitcoin move is a very big gamble because the infrastructure is not ready and so we have to create it we’re not going to be the only one creating it or again participating to a much bigger effort and joining this community of builder and also we have to educate you know it’s it’s still a very complicated concept to understand there’s the technical to take the purely tech part but that’s not so much it’s what we spoke for you know the past hour of a lot of things that are very different from everything that you learn in school we talked about a new form of capitalism we talked about you know a different type of relationship between stakeholders you have to learn a new software basically that is going to operate a lot of layers of this world it’s very hard to understand there’s a new thing there’s new paradigm to embrace that is one of the biggest challenge for me to try to educate people deliver this yeah try to explain make it accessible because you know it’s not about oh what is the blockchain it’s more about understanding what it means the technology is just a commodity we shouldn’t care too much about this but what does it mean at the experience level
1:09:59 From an experience standpoint what does it mean now when you’re not selling me your product you’re not selling me your service because it’s part of the network if I enter the network I get it for free but then how do you make money you know you have to explain that it doesn’t work this way the money doesn’t come from the you using it directly but because you’re we’re holding we’re hosting we’re holding onto a token that we’ll appreciate because of the value that you’re creating by using the technology that I brought to the network those are new things that of course even right now it would be hard to explain but we have to find a way we have to really go out there travel meet with everybody to really explain this and then ultimately by gamifying the experience it’s probably the fastest and easiest way to educate people for sure game is a fantastic gateway to engage into something new you know and it’s been happening in so many other fields and this is a very easy way this is a very great way to drive mass adoption 24 is the year I embrace gaming because I have so many things I try to do and teach people but I’ve never tried to really gamify it and I know that’s I know that’s where that edge is you know so you can teach me on this I’ll do very happy to good I think it was Sandeep when I had him on from Polygon one of the Polygon founders who said to me on one of the first interviews and he said Brian this isn’t about technology it’s a shift in human paradigm
1:11:31 That’s what absolutely it’s a completely different way of thinking about how we interact with centralized sources how we interact with with money with peer-to-peer transactions with communication when you when you use chat GPT you don’t care to understand how it works what you care now is how it impacts your everyday life your everyday you know experience of you know the task that you have to do or the new topics that you’re interested to learn about but how it works doesn’t really matter what’s a former Lazard investment banker doing making a metaverse game I mean you could be busy now taking over companies and flying in private jets and wearing your three-piece suits and here you are in a game studio hanging out with Yatsu and you know me how did you get here do you miss the days of investment banking?
1:12:25 No I don’t miss the days not that I didn’t like them but I think they were they were interesting very interesting days but what I’ve had the chance to experience after was so much better in the sense that you know I joined Ubisoft after where I worked on fantastic projects I got to create entertainment for the community for players that was a beautiful opportunity I’m a gamer myself so that was a great that was kind of a child dream to be able to do this and now I get to participate to probably the development of this new layer where we can expand our existence to me this is a blessing you know to be able to do this because I’ve dreamt of this and now I can participate in this to this idea when I was a child and I was living my life in the suburb of Paris and at the same time I could go home turn on my computer and enter another realm where I would be someone else not that I didn’t like the Benjamin in Paris but I was just so excited about the idea of having multiple identities this is the opportunity that I have the chance to work on and of course I can work with fantastic people like yeah like the rest of the team at Delwise so I feel very blessed every day it’s a great chance and every human in the world loves being someone else right they love playing the game they love new digital environments and identities right I mean I think that drops numbers on me like three billion people play games in the world this is exactly the number I mean when we think about it today
1:14:15 What is the you know especially in a developed country how many people I mean what is the percentage of our population that is really dropping sweat every day to address our our primary needs having food on the table be able to drink water having a shelter health it’s a small percentage of the population thank god we have them but it’s a small percentage it means that a lot of most of us are doing things that are not necessary to our survival so we’re just going we’re just pushing this even further because it doesn’t mean that it’s not important because it’s not really it’s not necessary to our physical survival it’s not necessary to our everyday life now so you know we we we can just now keep pushing the boundaries into something else and there’s something else now is to get out of the physical world and now enter other dimensions this is why we couldn’t call we can call it the metaverse we can talk about multiverse it doesn’t matter it’s now into a different dimension it’s funny I just had a flashback I think he said something like you know a lot of these tokens are stores of digital value but the NFTs are stores of digital culture I think he says that and you know most people don’t realize especially me coming from an engineering background but most of the value in this world is culture you know I’m wearing this suit why it’s a three-piece suit you’re wearing that watch like we all make these decisions and it’s not based on the utility of these
1:15:56 Otherwise we would buy something this one tenth of the expense it’s all of us attaching to a culture and expressing who we are by all the decisions we make whether it’s the car you drive or where you live or what you drove or the music you play or the Netflix things you watch and that’s so much of what we spend our money on and it gives us value in life like you said 20% is our utility and 80, 90, probably more is our expression is us being human and communicating and that sometimes gets missed culture is the soft power it’s the ultimate soft power that’s how you know countries like America have managed to become so such important place and and hopefully you know and this is interesting that you use that you mentioned France actually because this is why in France for instance the government is so invested into culture because we don’t we’re at the end at the end of the day we’re a small country we’re not sitting on insane level of natural resources so we can’t just rely on this we can rely on culture we could rely on innovation technology when I think of Israel for instance that you know has managed to become such an important country globally thanks to its level of innovation so culture for France is of course something that is really being insanely sponsored promoted so I think the web3 is going to be a different way now to create to recreate or to expand this because we’re more decentralized people are collaborating at the different level
1:17:42 It’s it’s less related related to the location you know you see all these all these projects they’re founded by multiple people who don’t as I was telling you a bit earlier sometimes don’t even know what they look like because they exist online and that’s good enough so again it’s a lot of new paradigm uh paradigms that we’re going that we have to understand how we are and sometimes that we have to accept yeah you kind of have to go with it yeah I have to go with it when I was at the ordinals conference and they had the guys on stage with the masks on and then the capes and I was like hey this is this this is what this is I can’t judge it by my day life standards this is a new culture I need to understand it’s kind of fascinating and you’re right for many many countries culture is a major export for you know France is a perfect example France but you can look at Asia today look at Korea South Korea is kind of taking over the world with K-pop K-drama so they managed to become a very a new destination like a contributor of content and it’s driving their culture and it’s growing their power globally yeah that’s a fascinating story I mean take 50 years ago I mean barely an economy there and now it acts it exports huge chunks of culture I mean they’re breakdancers are some of the best you were you in Korea before Singapore a bunch of people were there I was I was and the the gaming culture there is just off the charts absolutely and the online gaming culture
1:19:17 In particular a lot of the things that we build today in the western world was inspired by development from South Korea all of these MMOs that we that we think of that we talk about they originated in South Korea they’re free-to-play type of business model where you know this freedom came started came from South Korea it’s again we’re talking about a very interesting dynamic where it didn’t have to do much with the size of you know the population building it had to do with how influence and financial could be this type of a content or experience I mean K-pop is a bit in English and a lot in Korean people listen to it and say the lyrics too it’s just fascinating and just to maybe complete that Asian piece I mean we were in Singapore and the conference we were at token 2049 was I think the biggest they’ve ever did and I said it was the biggest in the world there were 10,000 people they’re sold out I you know it took me one day 45 minutes to get in the conference you know everyone was buzzing and you got the Asian perspective of web3 blockchain gaming which was very bullish the opposite of the narrative in the west and the one that creeps over to here in London as well do you see that being a huge part of the future of even what you’re building and I think it goes way beyond gaming you know it’s really today if you want to understand web3 I think you have to go to Asia the narrative is completely different which is probably related to a higher level of
1:20:59 Financial literacy because game like web3 has a lot to do with tokens you know with wallets and understanding this type of dynamics it’s fascinating to see how the relationship to blockchain to web3 in general is completely different than what you can think we see right now in North America for instance where there’s a lot of narrative huge narrative against it in North America well if you if you as soon as you arrive here in Singapore in Korea you experience something completely different they are like everybody’s talking about it everybody has a wallet everybody is already you know educated at some level on what does it mean you know assign a transaction to hold a token it’s already there so if you’re curious to understand what web3 is doing today go to Asia you’ll see and that gives you I think a sneak peek to the future right and they’re gaming and gambling and all of that is just all part of the culture people are deeply immersed in it and then on top of all that I mean you know your biggest partner is is Animoca you know which is all based over there located in Hong Kong which is now pro retail for crypto and so that’s going to have a great influence on you guys going forward as well yes the that was a very big discovery for me because the I when we before that we started this relationship with Animoca brands we were not very well educated about Asia we you know gaming was to give you an example for instance when Ubisoft was presenting in its yearly results
1:22:52 You know how like the Ubisoft for a long time was the third largest publisher in the world but there was always a little asterisk saying excluding Japan and it’s interesting because we were when I was working in these gaming companies we were really focusing on North America Western Europe Japan was a very standalone country China Southeast Asia was usually were usually operated by third-party partners so people that would take your games and publish them over there so everything else you would publish by yourself except for these regions but they were massive absolutely massive we were just so far culturally now it’s interesting to see how things are playing that’s wild so now you’re getting to peek into how that all works and you can learn from all of their ecosystems absolutely fascinating times how can people go start the venture right now with Life Beyond and follow everything that you guys do for the next so we have all our social media destinations with Twitter our website playlifebeyond.com the website is really the hub where you can understand everything you’ll have an introduction to the lore we’ll have some very interesting experiences coming up I think at the end of this month now kind of October ways to participate to connect your wallet we are launching sooner a marketplace because we already have NFTs out of course we have a very big engagement and activity on Discord where we have a big community so multiple destinations based on what you want
1:24:39 If you just want to follow and get the news Twitter if you want to learn more about what we’re doing the website if you want to meet the community and start to see to connect to create potentially your own organization your own sub-community Discord okay I love it all right and we’re going to bring my boys in on this game as well but I want to explain this with them next year I need some feedback I need testers good they can do that in the next 10 years I’d love to be there with my family as well we’ll all be there that’s really why it’s been designed this way okay I love it we’ll get a little London Real section in there as well Benjamin every time I spend time with you I’m always blown away I’m always I just get even more excited about this project thank you again I just love hanging out with everybody involved in this project whether it’s you or Yatsu or Rob from Horizon or Aervé and all these people like they’re just yes they’re great the best of the best all working on something that we want to make great that we can feel is like yeah we’re kind of on this amazing wave to deliver something great and just jack up the community and the awareness and bring more people and so it’s a great feeling we’re both going to be in Dubai next week talking more about this and yeah I can’t stop talking about this project and we feel really grateful to be a part of it so thank you really excited for this and yeah man let’s take life beyond all the way to the next level
1:26:04 Thank you and remember that it really embraces the through the true ethos of Web3 which is we’re not building this we can’t rely just on ourselves this is something that must be built by the community our approach has always been to open to give access to share to give opportunities to other partners to collaborate whether they have really a strong capacity or that they are individuals so I really invite anyone who wants to participate to this project to just reach out you know my DMs are open on Twitter I do I reply to everybody sometimes I take a little bit long a bit some a bit of time but I really enjoy this idea that you know the more the mirror and it’s a world that we’re creating so the world has to be will be populated by all of you so there is no limitation right now to participate I love that there must be very different attitude than you had you know in the web2 world it is but that’s why and that’s why I keep saying all the time I’m never going back right we need the community we want the community you want to listen to the community they’re going to help build this we’re all we’re all in this together we’re all in this together everyone is a stakeholder now it’s very different I’m going to end on that thought thank you Benjamin looking forward to the future thank you I appreciate you man thanks thank you for the invitation
