More exciting things are happening in Web3 gaming with Alien Worlds once again taking the lead. In this sponsored episode of Edge of NFT, Evan Dean and Matthew Grigajtis discuss the latest developments at Alien Worlds, a decentralized gaming metaverse which allows players to compete for NFTs and tokens in a simulated economy. Evan, from Galactic Hubs, emphasizes the importance of detailed plans from developers and a focus on how NFTs can enhance player experiences. Matthew, a developer for Trillium Quest, explains how their game integrates with the WAX blockchain, allowing players to trade and use NFTs seamlessly. The unique aspect of Trillium Quest is its integration with the Alien Worlds metaverse, offering a multiplayer version and plans for VR development. They also highlight the upcoming tokenized lore initiative, where community contributions will influence the game's narrative through AI-driven large lore models. Tune in to learn more!
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Listen to the podcast here
Competing For NFTsAnd Tokens In A Simulated Economy With Alien Worlds
Stay tuned for this episode to learn how a game that began in 2020 has turned into a vibrant metaverse with 6 planets and an interplanetary DAO-based ecosystem continuing to push the boundaries of Web3 AI and gaming.
Next, we'll look at a brief debate over RuneScape or The Witcher 3 as the greatest game ever created.
Which factors contributed to the growth in the gaming market for Web3, and how might it be influencing user engagement in comparison to other sectors?
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This sponsored episode features Evan Dean, who helps lead the Galactic Hubs Grant Program in Alien Worlds. He has a well-decorated background in marketing with expertise in managing ecosystem partnerships for blockchain networks and fan engagement startups. Meanwhile, we also have Matthew Grigajtis.
Matt is a seasoned full-stack software engineer who graduated from Southern New Hampshire University. He has been programming Maestro since 1998, with a notable distinct in medical development during his time at Health First Medical Group, but don't let that fool you. Matt also excels in developing cutting-edge business systems for manufacturing, finance, and more. With his diverse skillset alongside his knowledge of various industries, including blockchain, AI, and scrum mastery, he's a jack of all trades, so to speak, at Arch Games.
Alien Worlds is a decentralized gaming metaverse on Ethereum, WAX, and BNB smart chain, which allows players to compete for NFTs and tokens in an assimilated economy. Posting impressive on-chain metrics with nearly 200,000 daily users and at least 769,000 monthly transactions in a trading volume of 42 million, it’s the metaverse to be on. Founded by McKenna, Michael Yates, and Rob Allen, the games’ six planetary DAOs stand central to decisions. TLM serves as the end-game currency and NFT-spanned land tools, minions, weapons, and avatars and with the introduction of the interoperability bridge players, even earn TLM in Minecraft.
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Gentlemen, it's a pleasure to have you on the show.
Thank you for having us.
What's up? How's everyone doing?
Doing well. Thanks for having us, Josh. It's been a great opportunity for us. We are really excited to talk about Alien Worlds, Galactic Hubs, and Trilium Quest.
We're excited, too. I’m Matthew, a fellow New Englander. I'm from Boston, so New England's near and dear to my heart, but I'm also happy with the warmer weather over here in LA.
I'm not from New England. I'm a Buffalo, New York native.
I don't know. That's a fringe one. Some of you like the Patriots, and some of you don't.
Bills all the way. Buffalo Bills is my team. I remember the four Super Bowl losses in a row back in the early ‘90s.
You'll get yours eventually, maybe. We have Ju-Ju Smith-Schuster from the New England Patriots coming on the show soon.
That’s nice.
That's impressive.
I'll be sure not to mention your fan allegiances because he is a big gamer. I don't want him to discriminate against your game.
No doubt, but Josh Allen is number one. You have to recognize that.
He has been crushing it from my fantasy football. I heard that.
I haven't been playing fantasy football since 2023. I feel like life has been a fantasy football game in 2023. What a wild year. It's also been a wild run for Alien Worlds. You guys are as OG as it comes. Sarah was one of the earliest guests on the show. I feel like anyone into Web3 and gaming which isn't aware of Alien Worlds has been sleeping at the controller. For those that do fall in that category, Evan, we should give our audience a little bit of background on Alien Worlds and how it's evolved over its existence. We talked about it a little bit. It started back in the day.
2020. Alien Worlds started off as a mining game but has since evolved into this massive social metaverse. This 2023, we've seen the introduction of six planetary DAOs. From there, we've seen 2,000 community proposals that have led to a variety of games, apps, and content all being developed with the games' NFTs and fungible tokens at their core.
2000s. That's incredible.
That's super impressive.
That's a testament to how community-driven we are as a metaverse. It's been really great and fascinating to see this transform into what is a community-led sci-fi world where the game’s lore and IP are the key threads linking those projects together.
Matthew, when did you catch on to Alien Worlds, and what caught your attention?
I was aware of it back in 2021. I really liked the prospect that there's a wide-open canvas to paint on, so to speak.
I like that a lot. One of the things that Evan mentioned was the 2000 proposals, but that creates competition. With creating that competition, there are a lot of really cool ways that players can compete for digital assets and tokens within Alien Worlds. Can you break that down a little bit more for us?
Absolutely. Competition is a huge part of the planetary DAOs. You have these six planetary DAOs all competing against each other for the valuable resource, Trilium, which is the fungible token. As a player, you can compete with NFTs that have assigned attributes to be able to mine the currency for yourself. You can then have the staking of the Trilium to your aligned planet.
If I'm a player, I earn Trilium and align it with the planet by staking it to the planet. By doing so, I'm increasing the chances of that planet or team generating more Trilium for the planet's treasury. You can think of these massive treasuries that are used to create and build applications, games, you name it. You've seen it. You're right. Competition is a big part of that.
How has that played out? I remember some of the Alien Worlds team telling me about this shift that was going to happen a few years ago, if I recall. Even Art Basel, we were talking about it IRL. How's that competitive fervor shaken out? Have there been any surprises along the way that caught you off guard in terms of how the dynamics of competition have evolved?
The answer is yes. We're pioneering what DAOs can be, what they ought to be, and sometimes, what they shouldn't be. There aren't any rules to how you play the game. By playing the game, I mean being a custodian. As a custodian, I'm representing the interests of my community. Like in the real world, a politician doesn't always do what you think he or she should do. There are going to be surprises. There's going to be a lot of politicking. That's a part of the ecosystem. A lot of the real-world stuff that we see is happening in the metaverse but in a different way because we have the technology.
Have there been any backstabbing moments that caught the community off guard?
Yeah. I am not a part of the custodianship, but I can say that there have been stories of close-knit groups that all of a sudden, a week later, they're no longer at the helm of the community and some anonymous group has taken over. It takes a while to find out who those people are. Do they get doxxed? We don't know. It depends on how much information is out there.
What's really cool about all of this is that you don't have these rigid systems in place. It's very flexible. What comes with that as an output is anything could take place. There is backstabbing and politicking. It's all happened. We hope to see more of that happen because that really creates culture and what a community will stand for and what it won't stand for. It's an interesting dynamic.
For those of you reading, I'm drinking an energy drink. I felt like it was the spirit of the show. JOCKO GO is my real energy-zero crash drink. They're not a sponsor of the show. They should be because I drink it all the time. This gets me fired up. I want to go play. What do you think, Richard?
A good energy drink can get you going. I know when I do my road trips, I do that. Speaking of energy, one of the energies that have been coming at a high pace over at Alien Worlds is Trilium Quest. Matt, I know you've been working on that and have been changing the narrative from player to player based on how their experience is going. Can you provide a glimpse into how that is changing the future of gaming as you're allowing for true ownership to become possible?
True ownership in Trilium Quest? What do you mean by that? Can you specify that a little bit?
From the sense of the NFTs that are being provided and how people are able to take that and, I believe, go cross-game with it.
Trilium Quest is a standard rogue-like dungeon crawler. If you remember Final Fantasy on the Super Nintendo, It is heavily inspired by the earlier Final Fantasy games of the early ‘90s. It's heavily inspired by that. Our philosophy on this one is that we're going to make every single item in the game, every single enemy, and every single consumable in NFT that can be moved on and off-chain from the game itself and then do whatever you want with it once you get it on the chain.
If you want to sell it on Atomic Hub, that's fine. If you want to make your own game with them, whatever. That's where that comes in. We also allow the importation of certain alien world NFTs into the game-to-function as if they were Trilium Quest NFTs as well. If you have certain NFTs, you can import them. There's a direct translation of what they are in-game, and you can use those in-game as well.
You guys have a fun trailer for the game that you are nice enough to share with us. Matthew, maybe you can walk us through some of this.
Sure thing. We have some video of some combat with some creatures walking around some of the dungeons. It shows some of the crafting mechanics, some of the casting or tech abilities, some of the NPCs, and some more combat. Join us on Discord and Telegram. It’s very impressive whoever put this together. It’s a nice video.
Something that is important to talk through is I believe people can go play this. It is available, correct?
That is correct. You can go to my personal Itch.io account and download this. We are going to have the official releases on the website as soon as we connect this to the main net. The bridge, which is Trilium-Quest.net, for the NFTs is only active on the Testnet. Soon, it will be on the main net and the files will be directly downloadable on that website. You can go to my own Itch account, which is also linked to the website. If you go to Trilium-Quest.net, you will be able to get a link directly to the downloads. They are available there. You can see it there and start playing away.
That’s very cool. Matthew, I felt a little bit of Zelda in the imagery I saw. I am curious. It felt nostalgic yet innovative. What were some of the inspirations behind Trilium Quest?
Exactly all of that. There is the original Legend of Zelda. I was a huge Final Fantasy fan back in the day. There is the Dragon Warrior, which I believe has been renamed the Dragon Quest since a certain day in the US. I grew up playing those games, so I look back on them very fondly. I even play through some of them occasionally. Every now and then, I play through the original Legend of Zelda from start to finish and even the second quest because it was so much fun. It was a great game, a timeless classic.
There is also Ultima. I can't believe I forgot to mention Ultima. I loved Ultima back in the early ‘90s. Seven was my favorite. There is a lot of influence from that because Ultima was one of the pioneers of good, classic role-playing games with how the spell-casting system worked and the interaction of the environments. Although, Ultima 8 was a bit of a step back in terms of that. If any of you followed any of those retro classics, have any of you played that one?
I have not, but I played a lot of what you called out. Of the host, I'm the gamer. I enjoy playing a lot of these different games. One of the callouts I do want to say is you were able to build this game through Galactic Hubs. Can you talk through us about how that experience has been and what that meant for being able to bring your vision to life?
It has been a journey, that's for sure, of getting from here to there. We started this way back in the beginning of 2023. We've been working on this for 8 to 10 months, if memory serves me correctly. We were approached by James from Magor.
Magor being the planetary syndicate?
Yes. One of the planetary syndicates. That is why the game takes place on Magor to begin with because they initiated the project. I'm not the finance guy. I'm the technical lead. From what I understand, there were applications for a grant. I don't know who did that. It was either our guy, Alex, or James himself who went through Galactic Hubs and was able to land us the grant to allow us to develop the game going forward. It was a lot of work involved, that's for sure. There have been several artists and several developers. We cheated with the music and used AI-generated music in some spots.
I don't know if that's cheating.
It is because I originally wanted to get Meg Lee Chin to do the music for it. I don't know if you know who that is. She was a big industrial person back in the ‘90s who was with an obscure band called Pig Face and did a lot of raw material. I know her personally and wanted her to do it, but she wanted too much money.
It would've been cheating if you used her voice without her permission to do the music or used her.
We wouldn't do that. We wouldn't use her voice.
It's not cheating. It’s a little bit of extra assistance from AI. That's a fascinating conversation we have a lot. We should talk about AI a little bit later.
We love it.
First, Evan, I see you sitting back. You got to play the trailer. You're listening to what Matthew's building. You have a dream job with what you're doing at Galactic Hubs, which is another branch of Alien Worlds, where you get a chance to breathe life into this metaverse. I'm reflecting on your role and I'm like, “Wow.” You must be having a lot of fun.”
You got that right, Josh. I really do enjoy my job and working with teams like Matt’s to be able to bring these things to life and ultimately make the Alien Worlds experience better. One of the things that sets us apart from other grant programs in the industry is that we are more than funding. I was laughing inside when Matt said, “It’s a lot of work to be a part of Galactic Hubs.” That's true in a lot of ways. It is a lot of work.
The reason why we've been effective at bringing or rolling out interesting products is that we offer tailored marketing campaigns. Our marketing department or marketing team is very much seeing grantees or projects like Trilium Quest as clients. You could think of a marketing agency and a typical client. That's the relationship that they have. In this context, part of being in the Galactic Hubs program is receiving help and support from our marketing team.
Let's break down the program a little bit more. To give people the context here, how big of these grants are we talking about in Trilium? We can convert it to USDC at the moment. How big are these grants? What are the support services and processes for getting these things going?
The process starts with filling out an application. You tell us how much you're requesting in Trilium. Based on that, we have two different tiers of grants, generally speaking. We have what is called the development tier grants, which are smaller initiatives but with more flexibility. If you're coming to us for the first time and looking to create content on a show like this, it is the, “We haven't worked together but let's try it out,” type of thing.
We'll allocate up to 500,000 Trilium. You can work that out. That is around $7,000. From there, we can build on top of that relationship with that deliverable being delivered that we're happy with. We can build that up to what's called the pioneer tier grants, which is the higher level of engagement we have or the relationship we have with grantees. Trilium Quest is part of our pioneer tier.
We have a grant. Thank you very much. This is for full disclosure. I'm thinking out loud here. Eventually, we can do the episode from a replica of a flying saucer with a studio audience in downtown LA with some dope DJ. That would be going for the big one.
The sky is the limit. That's where I was going to say pioneer doesn't have a cap from scope to deliverables to budget, but you have to understand that getting to the pioneer tier is a case-by-case scenario. We really do ask for and want to see a level of commitment that would make us feel like, “These guys are serious. They're going to take this all the way.” That's what we found with Trilium Quest. We saw the game. This was not whipped up from the moment we met. This had already been in a development phase. It already had a testing environment so we could look at it. Ultimately, we chose Trilium Quest to get a pioneer tier grant.
Matt, I wanted to pass the mic to you for a second. What do you think sets you apart to receive it? As you are working with the team to build this out, how has that working experience been?
To my knowledge, we're the only studio so far to do something like this to have a game that ties into WAX NFTs. I really wanted to build something like this before we encountered Magor and Alien Worlds because I learned about the WAX network and how it was the least obnoxious in terms of fees. Other networks like the Ethereum or Binance network will spam your users with transaction fees or gas fees. You look at a game like Splinterlands, which is one of the most popular games in the Ethereum network. The Ethereum network spams you with these gas fees. It's crazy.
I remember in the past, there have been games. It might have been World of Warcraft for a while. It is where you could go into the game, find a rare item, and then sell it on some market. I thought WAX was really perfect for something like that. If you had a game where you could find a rare item and you wanted to sell it to somebody else, trade it, or do something else with it, WAX is the best environment to do something like that. It’s because you only have to put a bit of money into your CPU stake because it refreshes every 24 hours. That's nice compared to something like Ethereum, where it's like, “If you want to send over this NFT, you have to pay $8.” That's a bit much. That WAX platform is much better for that.
It was really easy to integrate, for the most part, with caveats. It can get a little bit tricky when you're talking about the WAX Cloud wallet because, for the most part, it’s web-only. It can be difficult to access that from the game engine because you don't have access to your keys in the Cloud network. Most people don't even know what those are. It’s a balancing act to have the bridge on a website that can integrate with these things. It's not so much directly in-game, which was very difficult. To my knowledge, we're the only ones on the WAX network to do something like this and have a game that interacts with the chain in such a way that I envisioned years ago. That’s all that.
Good on you. Evan, good on Alien Worlds for being on the edge of DAO governance and this whole ecosystem-building approach. You guys have taken a unique approach to what it means to build an ecosystem. I'm certainly, generally, and authentically impressed by it.
The fact that you are able to refine this and look at all the different ways that someone is bringing an innovative way of bringing the game to life and then able to weave it into the metaverse ecosystem of Alien Worlds is really cool. I know someone reading this is like, “I'm a developer. I'm building something cool. How can I go for this and stand out from the crowd? What do you think, if a potential developer is reading this, are the things that would help them shine?
Was that for me or was that for Evan?
That was for Evan.
Matthew also doesn't mind helping the competition, but Evan, you go first.
That's a good question. It’s something that we want to navigate often. The answer is we're looking for developers with detailed plans, not just ideas. Too often, that's exactly what we get in our submission boxes. They are ideas with not a whole lot of thought in how this is going to be implemented or executed.
The other thing is we want to see a lot of focus on how NFTs are going to have a deeper meaning to our players through your initiative. It's important to really know that Galactic Hubs is not the client here. The Alien Worlds community is the real client. We're here to align those values as the best we can for the community. What I mean by that is it has to be a community first to make an impact and increase your chances of being accepted.
One of the ways that you guys are approaching this is through this interesting combination of AI and community governments. You're using tokenized lore, which is a pretty unique concept that we should break down into what its components really mean. I think about the Star Wars or the Marvel franchise and how those iconic franchises have evolved and grown over time. They go backward. They go forward. How does tokenized lore in AI blend together with what you talked about?
That's exactly right. You were mentioning Star Wars and Marvel. That's what we're trying to do with Alien Worlds. It’s to become a franchise. We're doing this a little bit differently. We're going to be doing it through the blending of AI and community, where the community is the input and AI is the engine of this tokenized lore concept that we're putting forward.
The community in this equation is the part that helps shape the story. This is similar to how fans might influence the direction of big franchises. Where this becomes really interesting for someone who reads a lot is the collaboration that we have with Kevin J. Anderson. This is someone who's written 165 books. He has 23 million copies in print. He has co-authored Dune. He has co-authored stories for Star Wars and his work with DC and Marvel. You name it. He's been there.
This tokenized lore allows players to introduce new ideas into the universe while keeping Kevin J. Anderson's foundational lore that he has written for us intact. Contributions come in, but they don't cancel out what's happened in the past. It really is a contribution. That's a way for the community to be a part of the game's evolving narrative.
I like that. One of the things that the two powerful names we brought up from Star Wars to Marvel is the storytelling element and how it captivates and makes people want to go and create their own stories to go into that universe or metaverse in this example with talking with Alien Worlds. As we wrap up this segment before heading into our next, I want to bring up an opportunity to walk us through what's coming up next. I know you have some proposed lore releases that are coming up that you can potentially talk to us about, Evan. I'll pass it to you first, but then Matt, I would love it afterward if you could then tell us what's next. What's coming up for all the amazing things that you're building with Trilium Quest? What can people expect?
I'll start by saying that in 2024, we have what are called targeted grants. This is going to be a dedicated community storytelling initiative. What this means is fans or players in our ecosystem are going to be able to contribute their own character’s storylines to the Alien Worlds metaverse with the possibility of those becoming officially canon. It's huge. It’s officially recognized as Alien Worlds’ lore.
We have a lot of creative people, so we're expecting a lot of submissions. Something to keep in mind also is to make this possible, the whole targeted grants and submissions, we have what is called large lore models. In AI, I know a lot of people are talking about the concept of large language models. We're using that concept, but in this case, we're blending community ideas to enrich the game's story.
The way this happens is we take a contribution. If it's canon, it gets fed into this large lore model that I was talking to you about. That approach lets players contribute to the game's narrative and artwork in a way that is going to be able to give this engine more fuel to bring creative stories to the metaverse and ultimately lead into canon and, hopefully, be adopted by games and content that builders are creating.
That’s very cool. Matt, what's next for Trilium Quest?
Specifically for Trilium Quest, we have a multiplayer version of it coming out. We're working on it as we speak to get it out there as soon as possible. It will be the same map, but it will support multiple players. This game only takes place in the Magor Rocky Desert. The next release will not. It will take place somewhere else, either on planet Eyeke, Kavian, or whatever other planet wants to support it. We're going to expand from there. As we release the single-player, we're going to incorporate what we released in the single-player into the multiplayer. It will always be an evolving thing.
In terms of lore, we are going to try to keep this as much canon as possible with the official Alien Worlds canon. Whatever becomes canon, we're going to try to put it in there. If something gets removed, we'll take it out. It's really as simple as that. We also have other ideas in the pipeline that are for the future. This isn't the only type of game that we make. We also do VR development. We love VR games and would love to do an alien-world VR game. It wouldn't have anything to do with NFTs, but it would still take place within the Alien Worlds universe and be available on the Meta Quest store or something like that. We have stuff like that that is possibly in the works. If we can support it, we're going to be doing it.
We're excited about where it could go because there's so much possibility out there. You have six planets, and anything can happen on these planets. You've got space in between these planets where anything can happen. You could have a space shooter. You could have space operas or whatever. The possibilities are endless. It really is up to the fans in terms of what happens next and what we see next.
That's so powerful, being able to allow the fans to come and be part of that, be part of the lore, and help push where the game goes next. I'm excited about that with Galactic Hubs and Alien Worlds that's going on, as well as Trilium Quest. Those are all exciting things. To everyone reading, make sure you go and check it out.
Evan and Matt, we've learned a lot of really great things about what you're building, but we want to learn a little bit more about each of you. We're about to get into our next segment, which is Edge Quick Hitters, which is a fun and quick way to get to know you a little better. There are ten questions. We're looking for a short, single, or few-word response, but feel free to expand if you get the urge. Are you both ready?
They're busy guys. They haven't got a lot of sleep, so they're perfect guinea pigs for this segment. That's what we like. We're going to flip it up too. Evan, we're going to ask you two questions first, and then we'll ask Matt questions first. Either of you has a handicap. Evan, what is the first thing you remember ever purchasing in your life?
It has got to be Hot Wheels. Do you remember Hot Wheels? I don't know if they still exist. Those are the little cars.
I had plenty.
Either that or Pokémon cards.
Matt, what about you?
Like a typical kid in the ‘80s, most likely candy.
Did you have a go-to?
My parents would take me to Fannie Farmers or Fowler's Chocolates. It was whatever that struck my fancy.
Evan, back to you. What is the first thing you remember ever selling in your life?
Pokémon cards, for sure. I used to collect, buy, and sell.
A true trader. It all comes back to these early days in terms of how we all got into Web3. Matt, what about you?
Junk at a yard sale, for sure.
That's the first I've heard. I don't know if you've heard that one, Josh, but that's cool.
In the 300-plus episodes, I don't think that one has come out.
Matt, I'll kick it to you first. What is the most recent thing you purchased?
The Meta Quest Three.
How do you like it?
I love it. I want to play it. Wrath of Asgard 2 dropped and it looks so good.
Someone else told me that it's awesome. I'm going to go check it out.
I'm very impressed with it.
How about you, Evan?
Age of Empires 2. I bought that at 10:00 PM. I also bought the crossover application for Mac so I can play it on Mac.
Matt, what is the most recent thing you sold?
That I don’t know. My wife does the eBay thing. If I had to guess, it was probably retro pieces from my retro game collection. We've had bins of retro game stuff in the garage that you can't even use because you can't hook anything up to modern TVs anymore. I said, “Go ahead and sell it before it turns worthless like your great-grandfather's 45s.”
How about you, Evan?
My wife sold my Birkenstocks. I didn't like them. They were not used. They were given to me. I didn't wear them.
I'm glad they're not used. The next question is for you, Evan. What is your most prized possession?
Probably a watch that my father gave to me when I was younger. My first watch.
Do you remember the brand?
Yes. It's a Swiss brand, Certina.
Matt, what about you?
It's my wife and kids, for sure. I don't have any emotional attachments to material objects.
Can I say my son? I didn't know we were getting deep. I know my wife is going to watch this and she'll be like, “Your watch?”
Here's the thing. It's all about your interpretation of the word possession.
Exactly.
Some people come on the show and say, “They’re not possessions. They’re own independent beings.” It's fine either way. Shout out to Evan's wife and child as well. We don't want to leave them in the dust. Here is the next question. What would it be if you could buy anything in the world, digital, physical, service, or experience, that is for sale?
It's whatever my wife wants. I don't want anything.
I don't know. This is a good sign. I can't think of anything.
You've reached fulfillment. You're like a monk.
You’ve reached Nirvana. Congratulations.
I don't want to see what I could buy. I want to see what I can do.
Amen. I ditto that.
That's a good way of looking at it. Matt, we'll go ahead and pass you the next one. If you could pass on one of your personality traits to the next generation, what would it be?
It would be my desire to create. That's what I would like to be passed on. I have three boys. My middle child has it. We're working on the other two.
How about you, Evan?
It’d be my ability to work with people. Too many times in life, you find yourself in a situation where you feel like you need to be the star or you need the attention. Working with somebody, no matter where it is in life, understanding that dynamic and how important it is to get things done is something I'd want to pass on to my kids.
It's a great characteristic to have because, ultimately, we have to work with people no matter who we are in this world. Knowing how to work with others is important. That's a really good one. On the flip side, and I'm passing it to you, Matt, first, if you could eliminate one of your personality traits from the next generation, what would it be?
Tunnel vision. I have a tendency to get really bad tunnel vision when I'm working on stuff. I'll zone out, blank out, and forget about everything else.
I feel you on that one. How about you, Evan?
My wife would say my forgetfulness of things that are important. Sometimes, I get carried away with paying too much attention to the details. I forget what the goal is sometimes. That would be the only thing.
Fair enough. Both important. That's probably also one of your strengths. It’s the details. It’s the yin and yang. Such is life. Evan, what did you do before joining us on the show?
I had dinner. I'm looking over at it as we speak. I had some rice and some minced pork with veggies.
What about you, Matt?
This is going to be a boring answer. I was working.
Were you doing some dev work?
Dev work. It was the middle of the day here in Central Florida, East Coast of the United States, so the workday wasn't technically over. I was working.
Do you ever use AI to help you with your dev or is that cheating?
All the time. AI can't do your work for you, but what it can do is it could help you. A lot of times, it will build a framework of something that you need, like a wire frame, and then you fill in the blanks. You could tell it to do something really simple like, “I need a function to convert Fahrenheit to Celsius.” It gets you that without any issue. Most of the time, you can't say to an AI, “I need a class that does this,” or, “I need a library that does exactly this.” It will try, but it won't be correct. You have to know what you're doing with AI. It has been a very big help because it’s like having your own personal assistant.
There you go. Evan, what are you going to do next after the show?
Sleep. I've got a young son, so I don't get much of it.
I don't miss those days.
The next question is, does being on this show give you an energy rush or are you going to crash instantaneously?
It's going to be an energy rush. I love talking about what we're doing at Galactic Hubs. I love being online with Matt. This has been really fun, so I'm going to go with the energy rush.
That's the challenge with events in media. When we have these good conversations, it keeps me awake. I'm going to be thinking about all the stuff that we talked about the rest of the day. It's part of the joy of media. What about you, Matt?
After this, I really want to continue Wrath of Asgard 2. It was so cool. I only looked at it for ten minutes during my lunch break and was like, “This is impressive.” They did some great work. It looks like a lot of fun. It's very reminiscent of Skyrim. I'm impressed with the visuals. They did some great work, that studio. I don't know who it is off the top of my head, but whoever it is, hats off to them. They did great.
Richard, do we have a bonus question?
We do. In the subject line of all things gaming and metaverse, I have to bring this up for the two people who are clearly having a ton of fun in this space. What is the greatest game you have ever played? I will pass it to you first, Matt.
Besides Alien Worlds.
The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt, for sure.
My friend, Jalen, agrees with that statement. He has played that game and beat that game so many times. I'm going to call him after that because you said it.
It's amazing. They are a relatively unknown studio in Eastern Europe. It's great. What they were able to do was amazing. I wasn't too impressed with their Cyberpunk 2077, though.
How about you, Evan?
I'm going to go with old-school RuneScape released in 2003 or ‘04. I still play it. It's an MMORPG. RuneScape is really why I fell in love with the idea of helping support Trilium Quest because there are a lot of elements that are shared in both games. That’s my all-time favorite one that I still play. It’s addicting but a lot of fun.
We don't have a lot of time left, but I want to hit one hot topic that is particularly relevant. I'm looking at your data, so you'll have something to share on this particular topic. It is about the market resurgence and future prospects of blockchain gaming by ABGA, our friends. They threw a great event in Singapore this 2023 that we went to. It was one of the highlights.
What they posted on their blog is that the gaming market has experienced a 34% surge in token market cap within the last quarter, sparking questions about the rise in user numbers amid declining transactions in other Web3 industries. Meanwhile, Ronin still emerges as a major player fueling speculation about the next Axie Infinity, which we had Jiho on, but so does Alien Worlds.
I'm looking at the chart. Q3 started in September 2023. You guys were hovering in at a price of 0.0109. This time, we're at 0.015, which is approximately a 35% increase. My observation is that for major games in this space, ones with real history, it would seem that the Axie trend is carrying over to Alien Worlds and other top games as well. We have our friends at Gala. Their tokens have gone up as well. I know there's going to be a little bit of bias in your answer here, but would you agree with the ABGA that gaming is going to outpace the growth of other Web3 sectors?
Matt, do you want to go first or should I?
I'm not really sure, so you can handle that.
There's going to be a bias. I'm going to start with that. I do think gaming will outpace other sectors. If you look at what most people look at as NFTs, they will probably say Bored Apes or some variant of that. I don't think that's a fair description of what NFTs are or a fair representation of where we are as an industry in gaming.
There has been a huge monopoly on how games are played, owned, and consumed. That’s the case for anything Web2. In gaming, especially if you look at any of the large franchises, if they disappear tomorrow, your game's gone. You've seen that happen with PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 1. You lose access to your account that has all these valuables in it. The in-game valuables are gone. If you get banned from the game, you're gone. You lose all of that with it.
Web3, going back to earlier in our show, is where true ownership becomes a huge trend in the future. We're going to be able, as players, to take assets and bring them over to other ecosystems and not have to start from zero every time. That fundamentally only happens if you bring down the walled gardens that exist in the Web2 game. That change is profound in gaming, whereas in other industries, I don't see that as being completely revolutionary.
That's a mic drop moment. We can end there. This has been a really fun conversation. I enjoyed having you both on the show. Where can the audience go to learn more about you and the projects you're working on? Maybe you want to share your Twitter handles or any other key information. Evan, go first.
Come apply for a grant. If you're in the audience and have some creative ideas or plans on bringing those to life, apply at GHubs.io or learn more about us at AlienWorlds.io and start playing the game. Check out our Twitter. There's always information on how to do that. I look forward to meeting with you guys again. Thanks for the opportunity to join. It's been really cool and insightful.
Matthew, where do folks learn more about Trilium Quest and all the other fun stuff you're up to in the world of Web3 and gaming?
You can read about Trilium Quest and play it by going to Trilium-Quest.net. That website will have all the information for Trilium Quest, like where to download it. There's the bestiary, the page with all the enemies. You could get all hyped up. You can see what's there and what's available. I'm not very active on social media. That's due to my tunnel vision. I'm so focused on work. I forget to talk to other people a lot. I do have a Twitter. It's @FloridaDataNerd, if I remember correctly, but I hardly ever tweet. It’s only when I'm complaining about Sean McDermott.
Hopefully, you'll have some Buffalo Bills victories to tweet about and some more.
I hope so.
Once the Patriots get the number one draft pick, it's going to be paying City again for you. I'm sorry to hear about that.
We’ll see. We're trying to dethrone Miami.
I look at that as a sideshow in another year or two. We'll see what happens.
As we like to say, they haven't beaten anybody with a winning record yet in 2023.
True story. We have reached the outer limit of the show. Thanks for exploring with us. We've got space for more adventures on the starship. Invite your friends or recruit some cool strangers who will also make this journey much better. How? Go to Spotify or iTunes. Rate us and say something awesome. Then, go to EdgeOfNFT.com to dive further down the rabbit hole. Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest shows, trends, contests, and other Web3 updates. Look us up on all major social platforms by typing @EdgeOfNFT and start a fun conversation with us online. Lastly, be sure to tune in next time for more great NFT content. Thanks again for sharing this time with us.
Important Links
- Evan Dean
- Matthew Grigajtis
- Discord – Trilium Quest
- Itch.io
- Trilium-Quest.net
- Jiho Zirlin Of Sky Mavis, The Creators Of Axie Infinity And Other Decentralized Applications And Services
- GHubs.io
- AlienWorlds.io
- Twitter – Alien Worlds Official
- @FloridaDataNerd - Twitter
- Spotify – Edge of NFT Podcast
- iTunes – Edge of NFT Podcast
- @EdgeOfNFT – Twitter
- Instagram – Edge of NFT
- Facebook – Edge of NFT
- LinkedIn – Edge of NFT
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