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In this episode of Edge of NFT, Christina Macedo, co-founder and CEO of Play, joins us to explore the revolutionary intersections of Web3 technology and gaming. Christina shares insights into how Play is empowering developers with an "any game, any chain, any platform" approach, fostering true ownership of in-game assets, and reshaping player engagement in a thriving Web3 ecosystem.
Learn how Play's innovative tools are breaking down barriers for both developers and gamers, creating seamless experiences that blend creativity, ownership, and community. Whether you're a developer looking to innovate or a gamer eager to explore new digital frontiers, this episode is packed with valuable insights.
This episode is sponsored by PLAY. PLAY is revolutionizing Web3 gaming by empowering developers with tools for seamless game creation across any platform, making blockchain gaming accessible and engaging for everyone.
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Key Topics Covered:
- The Evolution of Play: Christina shares how Play transitioned from Ready.gg to become a leader in Web3 gaming, focusing on simplifying game development and player experiences.
- Empowering Developers and Players: Discover how Play’s robust tech stack enables seamless integration of Web3 technologies, promoting ownership, and expanding game distribution.
- Community Building through Gamification: Learn about Play’s strategies for fostering vibrant communities by engaging developers, gamers, and creators through innovative features like beta testing and user-generated content.
- Future of Web3 Gaming: Christina discusses the potential for Web3 to transform gaming with new mechanics, stories, and decentralized ecosystems that engage players and developers alike.
What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let us know in the comments on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/@edgeofnft/
Episode Highlights:
- Christina Macedo: “We haven’t defined what Web3 gaming is yet, but we’re creating the space for developers to innovate and define the future of gaming with blockchain technology.”
- Christina on Interoperability: “Our goal is any game, any chain, any platform. We’re breaking down barriers to let developers and gamers engage freely across different ecosystems.”
- Christina on Ownership: “Ownership gaming isn’t just about assets—it’s about data, identity, and creating seamless, valuable experiences for players and developers.”
For the full transcript, see further below.
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About Our Guest:
Christina Macedo
Christina Macedo is the co-founder and CEO of Play, a pioneering Web3 gaming platform. With a diverse background in law and product development, Christina transitioned into the gaming industry, bringing her expertise in gamification and digital engagement. Her passion for creating accessible and community-driven gaming experiences led to the evolution of Play, which empowers developers to innovate with blockchain technology. Under her leadership, Play focuses on breaking down barriers in game development, fostering player ownership, and enhancing community engagement across any game, chain, or platform.
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Transcription:
Christina Macedo: Hey, everyone. It's Christina Macedo from Play. We're on a mission to empower gamers for making Web3 accessible for all, enabling real ownership of in-game assets. You're tuned into the Edge of NFT, where we're empowering you to explore the exciting crossroads of technology and gaming. Let's jump in.
Richard Carthon: Hey, Web3 gaming enthusiasts, stay tuned for today's episode to learn how Play is revolutionizing game development with its empowering any game, any chain, any platform approach. Next, discover how Web3 technologies are reshaping player ownership and engagement in a gaming world. Finally, how does Play build and maintain a thriving community that bridges the gap between Web2 and Web3? All this and more at the Edge of Gaming. Cue the intro.
Intro: Welcome to the Edge of NFT, the podcast that brings you the top 1% of Web3 today and what will stand the test of time. We explore the nuts and bolts of the business side and also the human element of how Web3 is changing the way we interact with the things we love. This podcast is for the dreamers, disruptors, and doers who are pumped about this ecosystem and driving where it goes next.
Richard Carthon: Welcome to the Edge of NFT, the podcast created by Jeff Kelley, Ethan Janey, and Josh Krieger, featuring a variety of top-notch guests and other hosts like myself, Richard Carthon. It's another production of the Edge of Company, which is a quickly growing media ecosystem empowering the pioneers of Web3 tech and culture, and responsible for other groundbreaking endeavors like Outer Edge Innovation Festival in LA and Riyadh. Today's sponsor episode features Christina Macedo, who is the mastermind behind Play, and is a force to be reckoned with in the gaming world. This co-founder and CEO is on a mission to revolutionize game development by harnessing the power of blockchain. With a burning desire to make a game creation more accessible and community focused, she's paving the way for a new era of gaming. Play, formerly known as ReadyGG, is pioneering Web3 gaming platform focused on making blockchain game accessible to everyone. It supports creators and developers of all levels, enabling seamless game development across various platforms while powered by the Play token. Christina, it's a pleasure to have you on the show today.
Christina Macedo: Likewise. Thanks for having me.
Richard Carthon: Of course. So, you know, we had Rated GG participate back at Adorage Riyadh earlier this year and loved having you all as a great partner. And a lot has happened since, you know, having you all the way out there. So, but before we kind of dive into the evolution of what's happened to Rated GG and now Play, I first want to learn a little bit more about you. So can you give us some background and what, like, led you into co-founding Play?
Christina Macedo: Yeah, definitely. So my background, interestingly enough, is actually in law. So that was supposed to be my professional path. And then I started just dabbling into product by building digital contracts online and just thinking about how people interact with technology to just solve problems. and how technology sort of simplifies so much that we do. And that just got me thinking and sort of falling in love with just product in general and even something such as complex as law simplified through contracts, simplified through sort of this digital space. And I kind of dived in and I kind of left the law career in sort of the backseat. And then I joined another company, funny enough, that was actually founded primarily by lawyers, which was a health and wellness platform. And it was really about taking the most crucial, complicated matters in work and employment law and trying to solve it by creating a really fun digital space in which people could essentially learn about, you know, being healthier, being more aware, and that actually helped with turnover rates and, you know, other more complicated employment issues and and what that taught me is just the power of the digital space. the power of the metaverse, because for me these types of platforms is kind of that first inkling of metaverses that we actually had, the power of community and interaction, and then my sort of job was gamification. I fell in love with the psychology of it, and how gamification sort of incentivized people to do things that they wouldn't naturally or normally do, and then just have fun doing it, which is, you know, learning about nutrition, for example, and getting points and then wanting to learn more about nutrition because they wanted more points to essentially get like a free gym membership. So that gamification really led me into gaming and gaming tech, In mobile gaming, I'm an avid mobile gamer. I love everything mobile. And, you know, for the past eight years now, I've just been in the gaming industry building tech, and originally with Ready, and now Play. And the basis of Play was really to create a space where everyone felt welcome creating in Web3, and also a platform for people to come and innovate a space. We haven't defined yet what web3 gaming is. We've defined what sort of works and what doesn't to a certain extent, but we haven't defined what web3 gaming is. We haven't defined necessarily how people will really interact with the space. There's game mechanics that, you know, we don't even know yet. They're about to come. They're about to be enabled by this new wave of development and developers coming into the space and thinking about these amazing ideas by you know, tapping into blockchain technology. So I'll end there because I can just ramble on but you know, that's, that's a little bit about me.
Richard Carthon: That's an amazing background, coming from the legal standpoint and then getting your entrepreneurial hat on and immediately diving into a whole other side of health and wellness and creating ways of engagement and helping for retention, I think is really important, especially using that aspect for the world of Web3. A lot of companies are remote and not necessarily getting the face-to-face time that they historically get. So I'm sure there's a lot of benefits from what you learn that can be applied to remote culture. That is web three, but on top of that, one of the things I think is really cool is that you focus on is the gamification because I agree with that as well. People do align with incentives people come with a reason to keep coming back building like. Yes, community is one side of it, but a reason to accumulate points or a way to have some sort of reward at the end. It definitely resonates with myself, and I know it resonates with a ton of other people as well. So now getting into the game itself. So you rebranded from Ready.gg over to Play. So first tell us a little bit about that rebrand, and then as you're creating Play to create a way for people to be able to come into Web3 and have easier ways to develop, you know, what are some of those first use cases?
Christina Macedo: Yeah. So the rebrand, the rebrand was really us getting to the fundamentals of why we play games, or it's because we want to play, we want to, you know, essentially have fun, we want to be incentivized going to the root of it, we just want to play. And I think one of, you know, the first wave of gaming, web3 gaming specifically, wasn't necessarily harboring that thesis, right, around that why do people essentially want these digital experiences. They just want to have, you know, they want to play and have fun. And what we also wanted to tell our developer community and our clients is that we're there to help them build gaming experiences. We're offering, you know, this incredibly diverse tech stack to allow them to build these game experiences and innovate these game experiences for their players that want to play. So it was really about bringing it down, simplifying it, getting to the root of why people play games, and making sure that we're creating also a, you know, platform and ecosystem, primarily for developers, because the developers are the ones that need to build in the space first, and then the players, you know, come and build and essentially play with what they're building. Also to make it accessible for them. If there's too many, you know, we often talk about barriers for players and making it seamless for players. We're taking it one step down. We want to make it simple and seamless for developers so that they have the space to innovate. We're going to be their tech partner. We're going to take care of everything in the back end. We're going to take care of everything connected to what they need to build and bring on chain. We're going to make sure that they're never building in any walled gardens. And they're going to have the space to innovate and think of these amazing gaming opportunities that and experiences that they never really were able to create in sort of the Web 2.0 landscape.
Richard Carthon: I like it a lot. The barrier to entry is definitely one of the larger challenges that we have as people transition from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0, even putting some Web 2.5 tools in there to help bridge that gap. And it sounds like Ready, that Play is providing a lot of these tools, just like you said. So staying there, what are those elements? How is Play leveraging Web 3.0 technologies to expand game distribution, but also for the developers that are coming over, what are the benefits of using some more Web 3.0 technologies versus just using the traditional platforms that are out there?
Christina Macedo: Yeah, definitely. So I think it's important to know why we started building Play. So we started building Play because we tried to build a game experience on chain the way we think or know games should be built, and we couldn't do it. We couldn't do it because we couldn't, for example, keep players 100% in the game experience, right? There was no wallets that really allowed the wallet integration or wallet application to stay in game. sort of web three component um put a burden on the player like paying for gas fees that doesn't make sense especially in mobile when we're in a culture of free to play you can't expect people to play up front um so that was the basis of it if we couldn't do it as technologists and we weren't trying to build a um you know a game for distribution we were trying to simply build a game as a case study and we literally could not do it so What we sort of decided to do as technologists is just like, again, create the space to allow for innovation to come in. When we sort of think about creating these experiences and what we offer, we actually decided to really look at Web 2 first. Like, what do developers need to build a game? What do they need for the meta story of the game? The meta story is the gaming business. It's how they monetize. It's how they give the players access to their information, the assets that they have. It's where the community lies in the game. It's how people interact with each other. That meta story is so incredibly important. It was sort of being forgotten in the first initial wave of Web3 games. So we took the best of the Web2 meta story and we brought it on-chain. And then we developed all of the tooling developers need to create on-chain gaming as a smart contract, NFT management. We iterated what having a shop means in Web 3. A shop in Web 2 just means that developers are selling to players. There's nothing that happens after that. A marketplace is something completely different. As a developer, you have this opportunity to literally have your own e-commerce business. You're literally able to sell a variety of assets. You're able to enable players to sell whatever they own. You're enabling yourself to, you know, create like have assets that can be rented out, can be used for a period of time. People can literally have, you know, multiple players can own one asset. There's just a variety of things that can happen when we sort of talk about that ownership play. And then we talk about everything around user acquisition. Building a game is maybe 5 to 10% of the challenge. 90% is literally user acquisition. How do you find that player that's going to want to play your game? And how do you find that player that's going to want to play your game and spend in your game? You know, that we often call the whale. So we also started thinking about new aspects of user acquisition. What does it mean to do user acquisition in Web3? What's really interesting about Web3 is that because of all the data on chain, We, we essentially created our own user acquisition tooling that all of our clients can can tap into. But what it essentially means is that when you're targeting certain game events or certain players, the way to incentivize them is not necessarily just showing them an ad. It's literally incentivizing them, maybe with an airdrop, maybe with an NFT that's going to capture their attention. It's literally giving them something. And what we've seen in our tests is that we're getting a much, much higher conversion because of that. Because now developers don't have that sort of mediator in the middle. They're literally speaking directly to the player. They're offering the player something they're actually going to value, and they're getting the attention of players automatically in those user acquisition campaigns that are literally using on-chain data. So that becomes really, really juicy and interesting. And then we're going to add one more layer, which is user-generated content, UGC. At Play, we think UGC will power a complete new sort of gaming genre and will power a completely new commercial incentive for players to play games. User-generated content in the way that we see it and the way we explain it to developers is that now when they look at their games, they can really understand that their games is a real estate that owns, that is living on a blockchain. Think of it as just, you know, where are you capturing the space? These games that you're launching, because they are these pieces of real estate, you as a developer can literally invite people into this real estate. And what does that mean? By enabling marketplaces directly in your game, by enabling user-generated content tooling directly in your game, what you are inviting is players to become creators. Now it's going to do multiple things. It's going to improve, in general, the engagement factor of these players becoming creators, because they're literally taking the IP that they love, and now they're creating something with it. It's going to create a new monetization channel for you as a developer. Because if you're inviting people to come into your space, your real estate, and you're inviting them to create, and you're inviting them to sell what they create, well, you're going to get a revenue share based on what's being sold. And that's really interesting for developers, because they're building time to create these gaming, you know, gaming sort of ecosystems. And now they can monetize the ecosystem part of their game. And then the third thing is, when we're going to look at Generation Alpha and Gen Z, One of the main things they really want in gaming experiences is collection and opportunity to create. They want content. They want a ton of content. A ton. As a developer, that burden of creating all of that content on your own can be super overwhelming. But now when you start to invite players to create in your space, that's a ton of new content there that players kind of want because they get to kind of follow new friends and follow new people in this, you know, ecosystem and find the creators that they most have sort of like, you know, something in common with specifically. So there's just a ton that we're enabling. It's really about, what we like to say this opportunity of ownership gaming and just heightened community in gaming that we've never really seen before.
Richard Carthon: Yeah, so many ways that you're empowering the community that comes onto your platform. I mean, one of the things that Play really emphasizes in the importance of empowering creators, and you just listed all those tools that you're doing to do that. And for a lot of people that come and build games, a lot of them are very wrapped up in just creating a really good game without thinking about the rest of the business aspect of it, right? So they're looking at, let's call it 30% to 50% of their entire pie without really even thinking about the back half of like, all right, cool, you create this cool thing. Now, how do you get in front of people? How do you get them to retain? How do you get them to create content? How do you get like all the other aspects of it? And you're bringing it all in-house into this one place as a pool of resources that people can tap into, which is very empowering and really awesome. But one of the things that you do that is very ambitious is the idea of any game, any chain, any platform. Oh, yeah. So can you explain a little bit more about how play achieves this interoperability and the challenges that you're facing, making that a reality?
Christina Macedo: Exactly. Well, the key there is interoperability. And interoperability is not necessarily, you know, using one NFT from one game into another game. It's not what we necessarily mean interoperability. Is that possible? Yes, but there's a way more powerful angle than just that application of it. So when we say any game, any chain, any platform, it literally is the case. Our clients are building triple A games, all the way down to hyper hyper casual games, mobile to PC games, and everything in between. Some are building console games, we'll see what happens with that. But it really is the freedom of developing. And this is why we took You know over two years to essentially build our tech because we didn't want to create any situation of limitations for developers because this is really We're at the forefront of innovation right now. So we wanted to create literally the the the blankest slate possible to allow people to come in and really build whatever they're dreaming. And then any platform. I think one of the most fundamental things that we are not necessarily talking about so, so much in Web3 is that power of blockchain. power of payments, crypto payments, on-rail, off-rails, and everything in between, that sort of more financial aspect of it that is really verified, way more secure than a ton of things in Web 2, that is allowing new distribution channels for developers. We're seeing sort of the beginning of it in Telegram, where we're seeing all of these games sort of popping up. Telegram is and should be a distribution channel. Why? Because there is nearly a billion people on that one app. You want to be able to distribute gaming material wherever the people are. We've obviously built technology to bring games directly in Telegram. We have a different angle to it for sure. I think we definitely don't want to create games that are made for Telegram. We want to create a space where any game is coming into Telegram. So any mobile game that you'll find on Apple and Google, we are bringing directly in Telegram with leveling and challenges and leaderboards and marketplaces directly in the game. We really want people to understand that Different platforms can truly be different distribution channels, and it doesn't, especially on mobile, doesn't have to solely rely on Apple or Google stores. We're experimenting with WhatsApp, and we're looking at Line, for example, and other distribution channels so that developers can really distribute their gaming projects to anyone on various different platforms. So I feel like this is definitely going to become more and more of a trending topic. I think it's sort of been more in the background, but as we start really thinking about it, as developers are really innovating the space and are very conscious about the additional costs around, for example, launching a game on Apple and Google and that 30%, you know, stake and being able to take that 30% and put it towards something else directly related to their games, we're seeing a lot of developers be very, very, very interested in sort of the possibility to tap into a variety of different distribution channels outside of that.
Richard Carthon: Which is really awesome. And given that flexibility and ability to go from various platforms, various ecosystems and having it all work seamlessly, like you say, you're not necessarily making it native, but you are making it in a way that it works on all of these different case studies. And also going back to the original thesis of like, well, how do we make sure we go get audience? You got to go where people are. And like you said, Telegram is almost at a billion audience, which is
Christina Macedo: Yeah, what's up is like 2.7 billion.
Richard Carthon: That's exactly what your games, especially when you think about, you know, where do most people play games, it's mobile. And so meeting people where they are getting functionality and a platform that allows for that, but then also can get things native, like for your people that are building consoles, etc. Like, the fact that that's all interoperable is a very amazing concept and, and something that People even in web two for a long time, our companies tried to like guard off right like you couldn't necessarily play your Facebook farm field game and bring that to other places, people try to kind of finish you out and it's it's great that you're coming up with a more open way that. you can create something and have it go to multiple places. But one thing that you started to speak on that I want to dive deeper into is, of course, around the concept of ownership. So one of the things that is very useful for people in the world of web three that are already familiar with this is the ability to own assets in games and be able to do what you want from that economy standpoint. So what is plays route to making this a reality, and how are players truly owning their in-game assets, and how is that impacting player engagement?
Christina Macedo: Yeah, let me take it one step further. So it's owning your assets, but also owning your data and your identity. more and more, and I really do feel that we are, you know, at that point, our physical identity is just as important as our digital identity. And this is why people spend so much time in, in certain games is because they get to build that out, they get to sort of expand on what their digital identity is, like, who are they in this digital space. And when we say you own your data is because So many platforms in Web 2 kind of took that away from you. And that is part of your digital identity. And I think what we are seeing in Web 3 is nobody needs to take your digital identity away from you. You have to learn how to monetize it, actually. And by doing that, it's actually being very open to user acquisition, right? And Web 2 is like, but all the IDFA stuff, it's like, block my data. You know, I don't want to share it with anybody. I don't want developers to know who I am. and we're kind of flipping things around we're saying ownership gaming means you get to build that digital identity and you get to monetize it and in return developers can have access to that data and incentivize you directly when I was talking about user acquisition and having airdrops of assets that you probably want because, to your point, if you played Farmville and your data is saying that you love Farmville and you have every single type of vegetable and whatnot and I'm building a Farmville game and I'm going to give you a golden carrot, most likely you're going to be kind of happy that you have that new golden carrot and you're going to play my version of the game. So I'm happy, you're happy, and you know, we're all kind of engaging in this wonderful gaming experience. So it's about changing the narrative a little bit about creating these walls, and just creating situations in which both parties, the developer and the player, and we can also add the creator in the middle, but player and developer are sort of incentivized together. And again, it just elevates gaming in general, rather than creating those walls as a listing.
Richard Carthon: having that type of alignment from the beginning is also an incredible way to think about how do you then build the community aspect of it as well. So I want to dive into that a little bit more by figuring out for all three subsets, right? So you have your developers who are building, you have your in-person who is playing, and then you have your content creators in the middle. And finding a way to create games that blend all three of these together builds out an amazing and beautiful community. So what strategies is Play employing to foster that vibrant community among all three of these?
Christina Macedo: Yeah, the first one that a lot of people don't think about, and it's one of the fundamental Most difficult things when you're building a game is literally having people test it out and give you very, very, you know, truthful feedback. So what we have is, we have a program called Beta Test and Earn. And why is that really important? It is actually engaging the most engaged in our community to become play testers, to test games before they go live, to give the best feedback to developers. And why is that important? First of all, playtesting is incredibly expensive. You don't really know who's playtesting your game and they're probably doing that like seven days a week and you know, they're maybe not truly engaged as much. And there's not really incentivization there for them to really, really give you you know something crucial for you to really like elaborate and innovate your game. So what we're when we think of community and we think of this gaming ecosystem we're always thinking about how to each party coming together sort of can amplify um both of their experiences and how can we make it super super positive so when we're thinking of game development how do game developers you know start sort of marketing their game well they can start marketing their game by literally asking the beta tester community to come and test their alpha give feedback, find bugs, see what's working, what's not, and start talking about it in our Discord channels and so on. We're taking a lot of time to really develop this concept of early access, not only for people to have the opportunity to own digital assets before the game is launched and support the games through various different investment channels that we have, for example, when we think of the play token and the players owning the play token we really wanted to find a way how players can invest in games directly to help developers develop those games and we've come up with concepts of delegation where you own that play token but you can essentially delegate it to a developer building a game that developer can get the yield being generated. And then, you know, when the support is done, well, you can take back that play token and you can support somebody else in the ecosystem building a game. And that's a really interesting way of supporting, especially in the dev community. So we're thinking of various ways of how both sides the developer building the game experience and the player looking for games to play and playing those games and spending in those games can really sort of benefit from the relationship that we're sort of creating in the ecosystem.
Richard Carthon: That's awesome. Um, it is an end to end type of relationship being built because this is one of the first I've heard where, you know, obviously beta testing in these, these highly motivated people that want to go and try all these games early. And then basically become your fans that then tell the rest of the world or some of their friends, like, Hey, you need to go play this really awesome game. But then they're also like, Oh, by the way, like, you're saying I have this token and like, I can like help this come off the ground. And like, if it does well, then like, I can also reap some of the rewards of being an early adopter and saying this thing succeeds. So like, you're truly making an economy of sorts for incentivized community members to participate. And that obviously, for your earlier developers, that's the immense, it's super valuable, and it's very important. So it's a really cool way of building up that community and getting that going. And, you know, as you kind of look out to where the world of Web3 gaming is going, we're looking out to the future, let's call it 2025 and on, where do you think things are headed? And how do you think Web3 gaming is going to continue to evolve?
Christina Macedo: Yeah, so my BD team would definitely have an opinion. We've never been so busy and had so many calls and emails than ever before. From Web 2 developers, I think the reality is a lot of web 2 developers really look at web 2 and web 3 innovation of technology. It's not, you know, so deep in specifically crypto and, you know, that like really rough edge that, you know, web 3 sort of developed in sort of the early age. And developers are really looking at web three as this new technology blockchain verify transactions and everything else in between ownership. How does that really improve? Like improved my ability to build game experiences that I'm dreaming up and it's a much more different Conversation when we're thinking of more of the creative side And then there's the gaming business side because we often forget at the end of it You can have the most magical game, but if you can't make money with it, well, it'll probably kind of disappear So they're always thinking on the other side the gaming business. So how does Allowing players to own in the game incentivize them to actually buy things. Is it because you're able to charge 20-25% more? Are there other factors that come into play? Having reward systems on chain. What does that mean if they're able to be recognized in another game because they have a certain badge that I've given them? Or around user-generated content. really allowing players to create in a space, create from the IP that they love? And what does that really create in terms of, you know, enabling this additional commercial funnel for me as a developer? So, in our case, we're just seeing a lot of web 2 developers coming into the space. bringing core mechanics that they know work and players love to play, and innovating them or tweaking them just a little bit so that they're sort of enabling something new in the space. And I think that's the beginning of the innovation of gameplay for Web 3, because it really is these Web 2 developers that have spent years and years and years perfecting not only game mechanics, perfecting user acquisition, That are able to now be given this platform to be able to tap into this new technology to be able to now innovate what they have just enough to allow a space that players recognize, that feels seamless and comfortable going into this new gaming experience and testing it out. So that's what we're seeing. We're seeing it's not exactly Web 2.5. It is Web 3. All these games are on chain. Everything is owned. It's just taking the idea that there's not one or two or three game mechanics that live in web three, there's going to be in 2025 hundreds of new game mechanics that are going to come hundreds of new storylines. IP that live in Web 2, we have a few very big clients that are bringing incredibly important IP into on-chain specifically, and then new IP that's just going to be, you know, developed by this new wave of indie developers that are essentially going to come into the space and think of, you know, just these wonderful storylines and wonderful characters.
Richard Carthon: Yeah, I think you're painting a very bullish picture. It's one that I see coming as well. It's an inevitable inevitability. In my opinion, it has everything to do with making things seamless and easier to onboard both developers and the gamers. So you just spoke to the developer side, but I want to kind of point it to the gamer side. So one of the ambitions of Play is to bring, to help bring the first billion gamers over to Web3. So what are some ways that Play is, or some initiatives that you have going on to help with this initiative?
Christina Macedo: Yeah. So one of them, like, like I mentioned, was definitely beta test to learn. We want people to come in, test games, see that they're not scary and they're actually really fun and easy to play. And, you know, essentially start talking to their friends about it. Other things are really through a lot of various competitions. And the idea with competitions is that if there's a really, really, like, if there's no barrier to entry, people are likely to try a competition. And then we're demonstrating that these games are actually on chain. And we've done that with a various amount of publishers. And what we've seen is that 52% of Web 2 players have created an on-chain identity and opened their wallet. So there is no barrier to entry if the flow sort of feels really comfortable and incredibly fast. So it really comes down to the game. If the game is fun and there is no friction, people will play it. And as they see incentivization, as they see new opportunities for them to really collect, to own the community that is being created essentially in these games like never before, they're going to stay there because we're also seeing increases in retention at times 42% from the original Web 2 title. It's just about elevating that experience. And everything else that is wallet, on-chain, you know, player profile, paying for gas fees, you abstract that. You don't need players essentially mingling with that. You create it super seamless. And that's what we've done at Play, is that we make sure that the games that developers are building and innovating are what's at the forefront. And we make sure that everything complicated, like wallet integration, and anything around gas fees and so on is completely abstracted. And players never, never need to face that friction. So when you create, for example, a play on chain identity, which encompasses a wallet, all you need is your email and your password and you're on chain. That's it. And it was really important to build this fundamental tech this way, because again, we want these games to be at the forefront. people coming in and playing it, and essentially everything else being taken care of in the backend.
Richard Carthon: Which is awesome. A lot of times when you play a game, you don't need to know the tech that's behind it. You just know you want to be able to pick it up, play it, and go.
Christina Macedo: How many people ask what backend infrastructure XYZ game is using? Never.
Richard Carthon: They don't.
Christina Macedo: Or what server it's on.
Richard Carthon: Exactly. And it's a barrier in web three that I think we're slowly getting away from and getting more focused on just like, is this a game of fun, good game that I can pick up and play, have all these weapons components in the background that are like add ons, but necessarily at the forefront of like, what's driving people there in the first place. And it sounds like play is doing a lot of stuff to just help with that transition and making it very easy. So as a final question, what Would you like for for someone listening to this right now, let's say they're in traditional web two game and they're encouraged to start Exploring web three. Um, what advice would you give them as they try to enter this space?
Christina Macedo: Yeah, so what we tell a lot of developers is start with something you have and see how you can make it better with on chain, essentially, and technology we provide. And we're, you know, it's, it's not just the play infrastructure is not just an on chain player profile and a wallet and a few NFTs. It's much more than that. It's about reward mechanisms on chain. It's about marketplaces, but what marketplaces sort of add value into your game, it's UGC, you know, tooling, and so on. look at our tech stack and see how you can start envisioning how to utilize some of these features that were either so complicated to build on in web 2 or just inexistent, especially for an indie developer. So I've had, you know, at times comments like, well, I mean, you know, if you wanted to create a marketplace in your game, well, you kind of could do that in web too. Sure, with your team of 100, if you were going to invite like a million people to create in your app, perhaps, but now web three can literally give that opportunity to the developer building, you know, the development team of one building this game, the same opportunity as a team of 1000. And that's what we really want to do again, creating that opportunity for everybody to come and play come and develop And having the tech be at the forefront of that and not creating a sort of like friction to, you know, we want frictionless building. We want people to come innovate, the tech is there. We have how-tos. We have a game designer team in-house on purpose because we want to explore ideas and continue developing game mechanics also in-house. I think there's just no limitations. Just take what you know and see how you can make it better. And I think that's always easier rather than trying to recreate the wheel.
Richard Carthon: Yeah. Agreed. And it's amazing that you'll have that at the forefront of everything you're doing over at Play. And I'm sure there's a lot of people listening to this that's going to want to learn more. But before we get into that, first, I want to, as we wrap up here, give you a moment. In having this conversation, it's very apparent that there's a lot of effort and energy that's going into making play the amazing platform that it is. And so we have a section in the show called shout outs. So this is your moment to shout out any anyone, everyone that you want to that is necessarily at the front of the camera and getting all the amazingness of seeing what you guys are building, but are really in the weeds of just like getting it done. So I just want to give you a moment to give any shout outs that you might have.
Christina Macedo: Yeah. You know, the most deserving shout out is definitely to the Play team. So as we all know, the last couple of years especially have been incredibly difficult in the Web3 space, right? We kind of came out of this bear market and then this bear market again and there's still some bear sentiment and you know it's just it's been a very difficult you know two years and the team at play first of all there's been no turnover people have been heads down building and still extremely passionate about what we're enabling So our CTO, Martin Cormier, which honestly is a genius. And more people are going to start hearing about him because I'm forcing him to talk about his genius. And our BD team, Alfredo Barsena, which it's not easy convincing non-believers of Web3 to build in Web3. Now, there's been non-believers that we chatted, you know, to in 2022 and 2023. And now, you know, they're building with us because they really understand of the opportunity. So it's just continuously at, you know, chatting and talking and answering questions and just being very open. We take the responsibility of educating about Web3 and educating about the potential that web three can can generate for developers really seriously. And we'll continue talking to you like for years and years and years until you know, we convince you and you know, just the team in general, the engineering team, and the community team. And there's no other greater shout out that I would give and obviously all of our advisors and and our VCs that have really believed in us. We had a very, very, very big vision, and three years later, it's come here. We're building, and our clients are building with us, and we have, I think it's 47 studios building with us, and most of them are web, too. And some are bigger names, we can't talk about them yet, but you know, these are names that are influential in the gaming industry that are saying, yep, Web3 is here and we're going to start experimenting. And yeah, that's exciting.
Richard Carthon: That is exciting. And thank you for all those shout outs. I'm sure everyone who just got shot out will be very grateful. And I also think it's just a testament that like through these bear markets and doing all these buildings that you have been able to retain your team and that you've been able to grow the way you have and the persistence and consistency that you need in this space to really make waves. It's a longer game, but I think it ultimately pays off. And it sounds like it's paying off for you over at play. So for everyone who's listening to this, they're excited. They're like, dude, I'm ready to jump in. How can they learn more about play? How can they connect with you and start to participate?
Christina Macedo: Yeah, I mean, the best place to start is at myplay.network. You'll find all the information there. You'll actually find games you can play. And yes, if you're gonna download it on the Apple or Google Play Store, it's a web three game on the Apple and Google Play Store. So you can kind of discover and kind of be amazed at the type of games that are on chain and in the wild. and learn more about our technology. You'll have access to our Gitbook. You'll have access to our game design documentation. We're just gonna give you ideas of where to start and how to start essentially developing. And our community to join our X channel and just keep up with what essentially the latest and latest game releases. That's probably the place to start.
Richard Carthon: Awesome. Well, all amazing places to start. Christina, it's been great chatting with you today. And of course, for everyone listening, we've reached the outer limit at the edge of entity for today. Thanks for exploring with us. We've got space for more adventures on the Starship. So invite your friends, recruit some cool strangers, as we'll make this journey also much better. How? If you're listening, go to Spotify, iTunes right now, rate us and say something awesome. Or if you're watching this on YouTube, join over 130,000 other followers by hitting the subscribe button and passing this episode on to a friend or two. You can also catch up on myco, that's M-Y-C-O dot I-O, where you can watch and earn for your time and attention. Lastly, be sure to tune in next time for more great Web3 content. Thanks again for sharing this time with us today.
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