#22 Web3 Infrastructure and Ethos, featuring Carl from Sequence.xyz

Summary: Sequence - Empowering Web3 Gaming Development

Major Themes:

• Sequence's Origin and Evolution: Sequence originated from the team's desire to create Skyweaver, a blockchain-based game that was fun, accessible, and maintained the principles of Web3. Facing the lack of infrastructure tools, the team developed custom solutions to overcome user experience challenges, leading to the creation of Sequence. This includes addressing key issues such as wallet integration, node reliability, gasless transactions, and multi-item purchases.
• User Onboarding and Experience: The conversation highlighted the advancements in wallet technologies, making them more user-friendly and less of a barrier to onboarding players. Sequence's approach involves creating non-custodial, gasless, and seamless wallet experiences, allowing game developers complete control over the UI and UX.
• Tools and Infrastructure for Developers: Sequence offers a comprehensive suite of tools for developers, including a no-code platform (Sequence Builder), wallet solutions, marketplace integration, and NFT checkout options. These tools are designed to facilitate easy integration of blockchain technology into games, enhancing player experiences without the need for extensive blockchain knowledge.
• Choosing a Blockchain Chain for Development: Carl emphasized the importance of staying within the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) ecosystem for resilience, interoperability, and access to a broad range of tools. He advised against locking into exclusive agreements with closed ecosystems, highlighting the significance of maintaining control and flexibility in game development.

Memorable Quotes:

• "The team did quite a lot in quite a short space of time. But fast forward to today, we now have Sequence Builder Live, which you can access...and it makes it super easy for any level of developer to leverage our wallet solutions and our full stack of infrastructure." - Carl
• "Wallets are no longer the deal breaker for onboarding players...We're at a point where we can give wallets to players without them even knowing, and most importantly, that's a fully non-custodial wallet." - Carl
• "Try and avoid lock-in agreements as far as possible. Stay with EVM...put your player experience first." - Carl

Actionable Takeaways:

• For Game Developers: When choosing a blockchain to build on, prioritize EVM-compatible chains for their flexibility, tooling support, and interoperability. Avoid exclusive agreements that could limit your game's development and distribution potential.
• Utilize Sequence's Full Stack: Leverage Sequence's comprehensive tools, including Sequence Builder and its wallet solutions, to integrate blockchain technology into your games seamlessly. This allows you to focus on creating engaging player experiences without being bogged down by blockchain's technical complexities.
• Player Experience is Paramount: Design your game's blockchain elements, such as wallets and NFT transactions, to be as unobtrusive and user-friendly as possible. Consider the player's journey and at what points, if any, it is essential to inform them about the blockchain-based nature of in-game items.

The discussion with Carl from Sequence highlighted the company's commitment to solving the fundamental challenges of integrating blockchain technology into gaming. By providing a suite of developer-friendly tools and advocating for a flexible, player-first approach to game development, Sequence aims to foster the growth and accessibility of Web3 gaming.

https://twitter.com/0xsequence
https://www.linkedin.com/in/casp6/

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Transcript

NoAutopilot: 0:00

Hey, this is Noah Autopilot, founder of the Gaming Startup Collective and host of the Token Takeover Podcast. In today's episode, we share a conversation with the team over at Sequence and talk about how they're trying to keep the identity and ethics of Web3 intact while still solving the problem. Challenges with user onboarding and acquisition in Web3. Enough of me talking, let's jump into the pod. Alright, I'm actually quite impressed. Normally there's at least one technical difficulty when you try to set these things up. Looks like we're getting off scot free on this right now. That's cool.

Carl: 0:34

Oh, well you've just jinxed of us, man. So something's gonna go wrong. If it falls apart, let's just blame

NoAutopilot: 0:39

Carl. Let's do that. We, um, so I live outside of Portland, Oregon. And we had our first snow. So my, my kids and I were out, uh, sledding pretty much nonstop for the last, uh, last couple of days. Can, can you, can you sled down a sand dune? Is that, is that possible?

Carl: 0:57

You can do, you can do, um, sandboarding. Yeah, so not sledding per se, but sandboarding. Um, or June bugging is, is the preferred activity. Much more fun. Heh, heh, heh, heh,

NoAutopilot: 1:06

heh. Right on. What's up everybody? Thanks for joining. Good to see some, uh, some familiar faces in here. And the last tweet notification is out and it's right on time. So we got a, a couple folks with us today. Why don't we go ahead and do some quick introductions and we'll jump right into the meat of the content. Try to help these early stage game builders have a slightly less painful journey when trying to launch their Web3 game. I am Ryan Turner, no autopilot, I'm the founder of the Gaming Startup Collective. It's just a community of early stage Web3 gaming founders trying to help each other out. I'm joined today by my co host Juan. Juan, do you want to take a second and give a quick introduction?

JRP: 1:41

Yo, what's up everybody? Thanks, Ryan. My name's Juan or JRP. I've been working in this space essentially as a BD for pretty much the last three years and it's been really great to see things grow. Also the founder at Web3GG, which we're focused on providing kind of experiences within the Web3 gaming space to help professionals connect and network. And so I'm super excited to see what's going on there and obviously also with The gaming startup collective seeing how they can really help founders get to where they need to go and already seeing success. Thanks for having me around. I'm excited to talk to Carl.

NoAutopilot: 2:08

All right, Carl, passing the mic down. You just want to do a quick introduction for the folks who don't know who you are. Sure. Thanks,

Carl: 2:13

everyone. So as you heard, I'm Carl, South African based in Dubai. Been working for Verizon Blockchain Games for about over two years now. Feels like about 22 years, but that's just how Web 3 goes. Um, but yeah, very excited to chat. You know, I spend a lot of time talking to a range of, of game studios across different levels, across different stages of their life cycle. So, you know, I'm excited to dive into it today. All

NoAutopilot: 2:36

right. So why don't we kind of start in, can you kind of walk us through the, the sequence origin story? I was at one point highly addicted to playing Skyweaver. Great game. But yeah, could you just kind of walk us through the, uh, the origin story for Sequence, please?

Carl: 2:51

I can. Yeah. Luckily it's the origin story of a hero, not a, not a villain. Yeah. Look, we, we kind of date back. The team's been involved in the, in the Web3 ecosystem for a long time. Um, back in 2017, a group of founders. Were started ideating and they wanted to build a game that leverages this new amazing blockchain technology and importantly, build a game that leverages that technology, but that everyone can have fun playing, participating and all while preserving the integrity of web3. And that's kind of where the idea for Skyweaver was born. So pretty much by, by January, 2018, the whole team was gung ho, all steam ahead, building furiously and Skyweavers was launched I think about a year and a half ago and it's doing really, really well. Few publications have mentioned it as one of the best blockchain gainers out there. And yeah, we've got a lot of really awesome updates to Skyweaver coming just in the next couple of months as well. So our full teams across both departments have been exceptionally busy and we've got a big year ahead of us. But you can imagine that, you know, back then, 2017, 2018, 2019, there were just absolutely no infrastructure tool providers or tools out there to solve needs, which arose in order for us to, you know, wanting to build, but our sky, we even make it accessible to anyone and everyone else. There was quite a big, a big task at the moment. Especially when, you know, the only kind of wallet out there at that time was, was ready. You know, and we, we kind of at that stage knew that. Metamask is, is, has been absolutely pivotal for the entire web streaming industry. But it's not really gamer friendly. It's very developer focused. And obviously a wallet, the first point of order that we needed to solve, because that is how a user or a player is going to interact is on chain items. So when we're looking at. Hide that wallet experience easy and fun and secure for all users. I think one thing to keep in mind is that it's not just a UI problem. There, there are quite a lot of really good looking wallets out there with cool UI and things like that. But when we talk about blockchain gaming, there's, there's a lot of really deeper player UX issues that are, that go a lot deeper than just a pretty looking wallet. And so we kind of recognize that really early on. We had to set out in terms of building out a lot of. underlying custom infrastructure to solve for these deeper UX problems. And those are the things from like, from a wallet perspective, how do you manage keys? How do you ensure that the game and players always have a reliable node? How do players do transactions if they don't have a tokens for gas? How do players buy more than one item at a time? Because you know, players want to buy more than one game item at a time. And all of these aspects actually took a lot of underlying infrastructure to, to solve these problems. So. The team really set out and kind of identified all of these problems as we were building up Skyweaver and built out all the infrastructure needed. That's effectively where Sequencer was born. Born as a smart contract with multi signature, which was one of the very first account abstraction kind of wallets out there, which is not quite a standard, a standard term. Our team also co authored Uh, a lot of the foundations too, with account abstraction, now leverages like ERC 1271 and a few other things. Our team also coauthored ERC 1155, which is semi fungible tokens. Because, you know, in Skyweaver, we wanted, we needed semi fungible tokens for the cards instead of non fungible tokens. So it's just kind of dictating here that, you know, the team did quite a lot in quite a short space of time. But fast forward to today, we now have Sequence Builder Live, which you can go and you can access it on, on sequence. xyz or just go straight to, to sequence. build. And Sequence Builder is our, our no code developer platform that makes it super easy for any level of developer to leverage, not only our wallet solutions, but our full stack of infrastructure. And that's everything from wallet to indexer, to relayer, to. GAT sponsoring to a node gateway. And then also most importantly to marketplace solutions, whether it's a white label marketplace, browser based or marketplace API, so you can embed it into, into the game itself. Effectively, we've got a full stack, everything that's needed to integrate blockchain into a game on any of the leading EVM blockchains. Um, and that's effectively, it's Sequencer's origin story that. What

NoAutopilot: 6:38

I really appreciate about that story is I put in the messaging for this event, but like your team started out building a game and through that felt firsthand some of the shortcomings of existing tooling and services. And with that firsthand experience, and I'm sure with input from others as well, you went out and build not just one, not just one, but like a full stack of high quality tools to, to solve each of those issues. That's really inspiring to see that, that type of product led delivery. It's really, really great.

Carl: 7:07

100%. So you could say we took one for the team for all the benefit that the rest of our team has gone through. So yeah, it's been quite a journey so far.

NoAutopilot: 7:15

Okay. So I guess so forwarding today, you know, what are. What are some of the big issues that you see early stage gaming teams, like still struggling with and then what tooling or product or service has Sequence kind of put together to answer those challenges?

Carl: 7:29

Look, I think we had an interesting time at the moment because historically over the past couple of years, when, when you talk to game, game founders and developers and we'll say, yeah, you know, we've got the massive, massive onboarding issues with the wallet and you know, any, any kind of blog you read or any kind of interview you do, everything. The biggest problem that we have is, is a wallet. And I think that has come just in the past two years alone. I think we've just seen massive, massive improvements in kind of wallet technology. I think that's really one thing that's, that's been quite important. Wallets are no longer the deal breaker on board players. So yeah, I think we're at, we're at a state now, we're at a place now where we can give wallets to players. Without them even knowing, right. And most importantly, that's also a fully non custodial wallet. And I think that's also really important because we did go through a stage in the industry where everyone just said, I'm going to use a custodial wallet for my game, just so it's a better UX, but custodial wallets are not really the future. We shouldn't really have kind of defeats the point of, of blockchains, right? You shouldn't really have ownership. of your access to your player's accounts or funds. So we've come really far and got revolutionary kind of tech that does non custodial wallets that are gasless and headless and effectively enables game developers to now completely own the UI so you're not in a situation where you have to now shoehorn this ugly third party wallets widget into your beautiful game UI. Everything can now be lovely and seamless and I think We're now at that point where game developers can actually build game and not focus on, okay, well, how am I going to make this blockchain aspect of the game easy for my users without it ruining my UI or ruining my, my players. And I think there's some key narratives that are just happening in industry, obviously from a wallet perspective, account extraction. Is, is a growing narrative, which is also just on that standardizing. A lot of those, all UX problems, problems that sequence, the wallet aspect has, has solved for quite some time already. We also have slow because the onboarding experience into web three games, it doesn't start and stop in wallet. It's also around how do users and players get. access to these items. How do they buy them? Inherently, you've had to onramp into a specific token and then do a purchase. And you know, that's, it's a bit, that's a bit nuanced for, for just a traditional player. So these days we now have NFT checkouts. So players can buy tokenized game items just with a debit or credit card. Really nice, easy. You don't have to onramp to crypto first. You can make it completely invisible for a user. You can tell the user, Hey, you're just buying a game item. You need to tell them it's an NFT. And that's, that's very familiar to gamers as well, because the gamers have been buying digital game items in this way for years already getting into that place again, where you just have tools available to build these fantastic games that put players and kind of leverage the underlying technology while marketplace solutions now that, that enable you to embed a marketplace directly into the game and you know, you can enable instant buying and selling of game items. Gives you kind of more of an e commerce feel as opposed to, Hey, I'm going to go and buy an NFT on OpenSea, I need to spend two hours watching a video just to figure out what that all means. So I think that's really exciting. And that that's where we've come. We've come really far just in terms of the tooling that that's available to game studios to really put their player experience first and, and make a fantastic game, leverage blockchain and make sure that that players want to play it in and out.

NoAutopilot: 10:33

Hey, are you a builder? Looking for grants to build your ideal web3 gaming startup? If so, you should take a look at the Arbitrum Grant Program. With grants up to 25, 000 and a specific focus on supporting early stage indie game devs, it could be the perfect fit. Link is in the description. Make sure to check it out. Now back to the video. It's really interesting to hear all the different things that your team has built. So, last year, at the beginning of the year, me and my co founder, we were attempting to build Web3 gaming infrastructure. The in game marketplace, in particular, we saw as a huge opportunity. You know, because nobody wants to, when you're in the middle of a battle and you need to get kills, Like a powerful sword or something. You don't want to punch out to a website token, wait for the transactions. It's pretty defeatist of, you know, what fun is. So it's really, really awesome to see that you guys have, have built some of these things to keep really just keep that player immersion high, like. Keep them having fun, make things easy, make things familiar, which really helps with like retention, right? Which a lot of these games are, are tracking that day in and day out. So that's awesome. I mean, it's a great

Carl: 11:39

example you gave there, Ryan, because the fact of the matter is, is that traditional users and gamers actually have quite a short attention span. So as soon as their attention span is broken up by something a little bit out of the ordinary that they have to do, like going to an external marketplace or something like that, it does, um, completely impact onto your attention. And it is a bit difficult because. You know, there's a few hoops that you have to jump through at the moment. You trying to get your, your wonderful game listed on the app store or Google play or Epic or steam. So we are kind of jumping through the few hoops at the moment around, Hey, yes. On this, if you launch a, launch a game on this, on this platform, then you can have an. Embedded marketplace. But if you're on this platform, then you can't. And I think that's kind of also what we've really focused on is our full solution and full tech stack can actually help support you wherever you want to get your, your game listed. That's also quite important just in terms of where we are right now, in terms of game.

JRP: 12:29

Yeah, I think you bring up a great point, which is a lot of games right now are looking for distribution and user growth. Like how are, what are some of the specific ways that games can be thinking about? Possibly pursuing these opportunities that can get them there and also utilizing your infrastructure.

Carl: 12:44

Yeah, look, it's a, we could talk on this topic probably for the whole night, but ultimately I think you kind of need to understand who's your target market. Okay, so what is going to be your primary, what is going to be your primary, just are you kind of going for only mobile first? So in which case then you need to build for Apple's rules and for, for Google's rules, right? And both of those in themselves. Are also slightly different. And we, we bought Skyweaver listed on both of those, those apps. So I can kind of tell you in terms of what are the different differences between how we've built Skyweaver for both of those individual app stores. So ultimately, maybe I'll start with, if you had to go to Skyweaver, um, and browser version, We're just on your desktop. You've obviously got full access to everything. Okay, so you can play the game on browser. You can go to the embedded marketplace over there, which is really sleek and beautiful, like you'd expect from a game marketplace. You can do transactions, purchases, everything directly through that marketplace. You can do it through Leveraging crypto. If you've got USDC in your wallet, or you can do it with, with NFT checkout. So you've got both of those options. Then if you go through the Google play Android app, what you will see there is that you can actually see all of, pretty much the full package of the game. So you can play everything in the game. You can see the marketplace. However, you cannot buy items through that marketplace with in app purchases. Okay. And then. If you go to the Apple version, Apple has the game, but you won't see any marketplace option. So if I'm an Apple user, which I am myself, then if I want to buy one of the Skyweaver cards, I've effectively got to go to the browser version and access the Skyweaver marketplace through the browser. So effectively what we've built out and, uh, with SkyWeek with sequence from our marketplace solutions is one underlying marketplace, right? And then that marketplace, you can have a widely browser based marketplace. Okay. To cater for these situations like with, with Apple, where users and players are going to have to Be able to access the marketplace on the browser version, because that's the only way that they can actually get items to get access to buying your items. But then we've also got launching pretty soon is our marketplace engine API. And that will enable you to actually pull through the same liquidity on that underlying marketplace and just pull that into your game. And you can see how we've got the tools to help developers to. Have the solutions in place to be able to get listed on those app stores. Hopefully, I think we will hopefully see something like this, this year, as we see these app stores getting a bit more open into what is allowed and not allowed for all games, but ultimately we prepared ourselves to be able to cater for, for all of those solutions, current and future.

JRP: 15:07

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think, you know, those are all things needed for a game to be onboarded. And on top of that, they also all the time look for marketing, right. To, to push those users. And get them, do you have any sort of like ecosystem partnerships that you are working with that mainly focus on user acquisition?

Carl: 15:22

Um, we have a few that we can't name them just now, but I'll happily get sent through a list into the, the game, the gaming startup collectives discord after this, but yeah, we've got a, a, a head of strategy and partnership. Sam Barbary is kind of leading a lot of those conversations. My man from our side, we do have a couple of partners that are focused on UA, also focused on this. As well, they've got one or two partners that will also focus on, they've got the rights to do ads and in certain traditional games at the moment or web 3d games. So yeah, we do have a broad ecosystem of different tool providers and providers and partners that can help with all areas

NoAutopilot: 15:54

of full games. I, um, one question I always love to ask, I know it isn't like exactly right on the nose for, for what Sequence does, but just probably in your travels, you just see a lot of different teams. And I think with that comes a lot of like tribal knowledge that if we can try and. Awesome threads out of can really help folks one question. I always love to ask is you know for teams that are Trying to choose a chain to build on do you have any advice? For founders when kind of weighing that decision and then a fall onto that would be maybe like the biggest Mistakes that you see founders may kind of make that ultimate decision of when they're going to build their game off of.

Carl: 16:30

Yeah, such a lovely topic. We've talked about this quite often, um, with lots of game teams that we talk to. I can definitely give a bit of advice and I think what I, what I'll just caveat my advice with is that I think about this and I gave this advice from a, from a business perspective, exactly from a purely technical perspective, right? What I really say is number one, and I can't stress this part enough, is stay EVM. And I think there's a lot of different reasons for that. One of them is that if we look at Ethereum at the moment, Ethereum is no longer just H, but it's, it's now morphed into an ecosystem of chains. To kind of highlight why is that important? There's quite a nice little analogy I'll make is that everyone who I'm sure is listening to this moment, everyone has worked with a Microsoft Excel data file before or two data files. And being in that situation. Where you've got two different sheets of data and you want to copy and paste them into one sheet. And you know that that is just physically impossible. And the most frustrating thing, the rows and the columns of each sheets are do not match exactly the same. And that's effectively what EVM and following EVM standards does for the, for the industry just has shared standards across multiple different chains. Okay. If you think about that from a business perspective, in terms of why is that so important? It means that staying on an EVM chain. We'll ensure that your business is resilient. Okay. The blockchain is still pretty new technology. Anything can happen. A chain can go out of business, a chain could go down, you know, anything can happen. If you're on an EVM chain, and this does happen, you can much, much easier pick up and redeploy onto another EVM chain. So much less resource and effort. than if you were going from a non EVM chain to an EVM chain, et cetera. And we kind of did see this thing back in my memory serves correctly back in 2022. There were those issues with FTX and Solana was kind of casualty in that regard. We saw a mass exodus of games and NFT based projects from Solana to Polygon and a bunch of other chains. Some of those projects are now only getting to the point where they're redeploying onto, onto another, onto an EVM chain after that, that mess. And I think that's quite important just to consider. You never know what's going to happen in this industry, but being on shared standards is, is really powerful. Shared standards is also quite powerful just in terms of interoperability. Future use case that we all want to get to where I can use my, my game items in one year in multiple games. Shared standards is really going to be the foundation of how that happens. And that'll work and that's a mammoth task to undertake, but you know, I can only really see that happening if different games are using the same EVM standards. The other thing is that I think quite important is if you look at tooling, the fact of the matter is that when you choose a chain, it's not the chain that is going to directly impact on your user's user experience. Okay. It's actually the tools that are going to impact on that. So that's effectively where you look at the wallet aspect, the NFT checkout aspect. Everything that a user is touching, that is actually a little bit more important to you as a developer than the chain itself. I think that that's pretty keys. And what we do see at the moment is a lot of these tool providers, and especially the leading tool, but they are supporting the open public main EVM chains first, whether it's an Ethereum or a Polygon or something like that, and then they end up rolling out to other chains. So I think that's quite important as well. This gives you. A bit more resilience just in terms of the tool provider aspect, because we can also see just over the past couple of years that it is, again, just saying that it's a new industry. So tool providers can also go out of business. And we've seen that a few times over the past couple of years. And if you're long to only one of those tool providers, and you don't have any other options to move to another provider easily, then that's a bit of a problem for you. That also leads me into the next point in terms of. Kind of steering clear, let's, let's call them closed ecosystems. So the closed ecosystems that are effectively offering you a chain and pooling all in one, but you're effectively locked into only using that chain and that, that tools. And it feels pretty much like putting a lot of your eggs in one. All into, into one basket. The fact of the matter is, is that if being locked into a specific chain and to only using their own tools, you're giving up quite a lot of control resilience for your game, right? If you can only use a specific tool to leverage that specific chain, what happens to that tool if it goes down or if it ceases to exist, then your game is pretty much screwed. Right. So you get into a situation where if you do end up going with these kind of closed ecosystems, you guys, as a game for actually giving up quite a lot of control, you're, you end up going, you're kind of getting married without, without having gone on a first date, if that makes sense. And I think that that's quite something to think about just from a, from a business perspective, especially when the entire point of web three trustless, commissionless, Ownership, right? That's kind of the core is that, and that's kind of what we're doing with three games. We want users to own and complete ownership over their game. If you're building a web three game and you're giving ownership of that game to the chain and putting it all in all your eggs in that one basket, you know, then why are you building a web three game? If you're saying to your players. Hey, we're building this wonderful blockchain enabled game. So you're going to have full ownership of all your game items. Just so, so cool. Uh, you can actually only hold these items and access them in this one place or passport or inventory, and you don't actually have full ownership over it. Cause if, if that non public chain goes down, then it's actually all gone. So it feels like there's a lot of, a lot of eggs all in one basket in those approaches. So my number one advice to you is try and avoid lock in agreements as far as possible. Stay with EVM. When making a decision on the chain, put your player experience first. First, understand what is the player experience that you want to achieve within your game. Make sure that you can find the tool providers that can 110 percent enable that player experience, because at the end of the day, that is the most important. And then once you found those tool providers, then you can decide on what, what change, what change to support. And I think that's how I would look at it just from a business or commercial perspective.

NoAutopilot: 22:08

Perfect answer. Perfect answer to it. And what I like about it is, you know, with all the different changes that we've seen, different projects kind of going under, you know, having a contingency plan from day one, building your product with some flexibility. Paint yourself into a corner is, uh, it's a great call out. Okay, folks. So we have, I have two, maybe three questions left for Carl. This is a communal space. So if you have a question that's specific to the product you're working on, Feel free to drop in the comments. Uh, happily we'll, we'll read out any of those. So Carl, I don't want to get you in trouble, but can you give us, um, maybe a little bit of an understanding of, of what you and your team are working towards?

Carl: 22:48

Yeah, I'd love to. I'm probably going to get into trouble, but, um, we'll, we'll, we'll do it anyway. And look, we, we're super excited for 2024. I think just, just at a foundation level anyway, I was very hopeful that 2023, we would see a lot of revolutions that are. Live and leveraging blockchain tech, but didn't really happen last year, but I think this year I'm super excited. There are quite a few games in the pipeline that I think are really going to excuse the pun, but change the game for us from a web 3 game industry perspective. And yeah, we, we're really excited to work with quite a few of those as well. And I think 2024 for us, we've got a really massive and enormous where we were launching out brand new Unity SDK, brand new Unreal Engine SDK, both of Powered by what we refer to as sequence vault and sequence vault is effectively our wanted as a service solution that encompasses everything that I've, I've really spoken about today. And it, it's focused on giving game developers the power to build out your player experience from end to end when it comes to a wallet solution. And when it comes to the gas situation, um, when it comes to node access, everything like that, the wallet of the service is ski headless. You have complete. Control over what that's going to look like in your game itself. Um, and it makes that player experience just so, so, so much easier and better. So the long list of games on that wait list, I'm going to be building with the, those new SDKs, um, really, really soon with that, we've, we've obviously got our, our existing marketplace solution, which is a white label marketplace solution that is already live. Um, that marketplace solution is working really well for. Existing Web3 games that have, um, existing NFT collections that are sitting on OpenSea or Magic Eden or any of those other sectors. And what we do is we actually aggregate those collections from each of those secondary marketplaces, put them into beautiful player friendly white label browser based marketplace. And that's the one I did refer to a little bit earlier after Juan's question. And as I mentioned, then we, we do have the marketplace engine API, that's also going to be coming out. Um, within Q1, that'll be able to take that, that marketplace solution and embed it into, into the game itself. And I think that's pretty, pretty important because if you think about some of the problems that we've been talking about with, with three games over the past couple of years, um, basically the wallet aspect. And again, that's going to, that is now completely solved. Then it's around, we also have to think about if you're giving a user player, a game wallet that they access the game with, then they also need to be able to buy. Items directly into that wallet. So that wallet needs to be able to connect either to your, obviously to your embedded, but in a situation where, Hey, you're building and you want to get your game onto Apple app store, then you still need that browser based marketplace, right? And so that's where our wallet as a service will easily link into that white label marketplace that we have on offer. And then you've got really a nice full stack around wallet, marketplace, NFT checkout, everything you need to. Enable users to be able to play your game smoothly, seamlessly, and get access to your items. And then with Sequence Builder, that we just have so much stuff coming up, um, in the next little while is just all of the actual underlying tools to really make sure that you are pushing that user experience to that, to that next level. So we're really looking into how our solutions cater for that next generation of blockchain leveraging games, helping to power those games that also maybe choose to have a bit of a mix between auth and on chain items, which I think we'll see a bit more Coming through and yeah, I think one of the other important aspects is, you know, talking quite a lot around open source and the core of the sequence stack is a radio open source, but we, we're on a bit deeper into this, um, as well, so yeah, that's, that's a lot of what's coming for us, um, for 2024. And I'm excited to see a lot of exciting games launch, um, with the stack.

NoAutopilot: 26:15

Okay. And as you were reading through there, the, what kept jumping at the front of my mind was, uh, ABS always be shipping. Right, your team is definitely crushing you in that department. All right, so looks like our only question so far is from GD Wizard and he wants to know Carl Why are we not already friends? So it sounds like maybe you got a DM coming in from, uh, from Wizard. Gee Wizard, I feel like we found him, so let's have a chat and see what we can do. All right, so my last two questions. Can you kind of tell us the story behind you and that magnificent elephant? Behind doing your profile pic. I, I need to know more about that.

Carl: 26:53

Uh, yeah, I've been considering maybe I should make that into an NFT. But no, so as I mentioned at the start, I am South African. So being in what we refer to as the bush is quite close to my heart. So yeah, me and my family, we did a very special. I think the rest of the world calls it a safari. So if you see Megan laughing at me, she's also South African, but yeah, we went on a really awesome safari sometime last year and yeah, that elephant was grazing on a tree that was not three meters away from, from the game vehicle. And yeah, it's always a fantastic memory to look at.

NoAutopilot: 27:22

Very cool. Very, very

Carl: 27:24

cool. So if you, if you guys haven't been to South Africa and you haven't been on a safari, um, I think you should put that on your 2024 roadmap.

NoAutopilot: 27:30

We'll have to do like a, a, a sequence, a demo day so we can expense the trip. You know, we'll have to figure that part out. Okay. I like the sound of that so we can figure something out. All right. So Carl, if folks want to get in contact with you, if they have questions we didn't cover today, what is the best way for them to reach out? The best

Carl: 27:48

way is go have a look at sequence. xyz. We've got a lovely little contact us form. You fill that format. It's actually the best way for us to just to gather a little bit of information around you and then make sure that you. You're talking to really the best person in our team. We have a wonderful team of obedient partnerships, people who are just waiting to, to talk to anyone and everyone and help gain. Yeah. Have a look at sequence. xyz, fill out the contact us form. Um, also while you're there, play around with sequence. build and sequence builder. But yeah, you want to reach out to me directly. You're welcome to do it here on Twitter, or you can get me on LinkedIn, or I'm even in the, the G, So you're welcome just to ping me there and I'll always be happy to chat. I'm going to pass it over to

NoAutopilot: 28:25

Juan. Any last questions, comments, concerns before we, uh, shut this space down?

JRP: 28:30

Yeah, of course. I think as, uh, someone who obviously wants to support games, what are some of the top three games that are building that you're looking forward to? Maybe, maybe not top three because we know how that is, but maybe some of the ones that will possibly, uh, be launching soon?

Carl: 28:42

Okay. So, so we've, we've got a, We've got a great number of, of really close game teams. We've got a few that aren't really announced yet, but are probably the most exciting ones. But you know, we've got some longstanding partners in the, in the form of boom lands. The hunters on chain game is really doing pretty well at the moment. They're just an awesome team, a wonderful game at the moment. So excited to see how hunters on chain really morphs. Over this couple of months, I know that they also have a pretty exciting roadmap. We've also got Spellborn in the mix. Spellborn, really, really cool. They previously used to be Defymons, if you mind about them, but they're also launching pretty much in February. So quite a lot happening in that regard. You know, we've got some fantastic partners in Planet Mojo. Mike and his team is really wonderful and doing quite a lot of awesome stuff there. Mighty Action Heroes, also super fun. Sunflowerland, always love to shout out them cause Sunflowerland is just a wonderful team and with a really, also exceptional 2024 roadmap coming up. But yeah, if you don't stop me now, I'm going to just run through the entire pipeline.

JRP: 29:42

It obviously goes to show how much you care about, uh, these games launching. Right. Cause I think it's so important. And, and like you mentioned a lot of great games that are already out. Uh, it goes to show that the, the depth that Sequence has, and I'm sure also speaks to the, Uh, experience and support you can provide to games. So, hopefully, if there's anybody in the, in the audience that wants to chat, they can chat with

NoAutopilot: 29:59

you. So, I do want to close this space in, let's say, five minutes tops. Always love to give people time back. Just a good, good thing to do. In saying that, though, we did have a member, uh, Hill, asked to be brought up. And, uh, I'm assuming they have a question for our panelists. So, so go ahead, suck it. Take it away.

Guest: 30:15

All right, bro. Thank you very much. Um, I did bring this question in the comments Well, i'm gonna ask it. I'm an esports researcher and a player educational facilitator And one question I would like to ask is um shouldn't players That are new to web gaming be aware of what they are buying in the web3 game What I mean is when players buy a gun or a character skin in like god of war mobile We know that this is this is Because this is you can only use in the game. All right, so it doesn't have any monetary value outside of the game or anything So uh transitioning to web3 gaming, uh, shouldn't players know that okay when i'm buying and uh, It's key in the game in the web3 game Shouldn't they know that this is an nfc regardless of if they have views about um crypto and tokens and other so that was the question

Carl: 30:58

Yeah, thanks for that question. I think it is it it's a very valid question I think maybe the question i'll ask back to you is You Does it matter at what point that you tell the player that, Hey, this is an NFT. You think about a player experience and effectively what they're doing. If I'm a player and I'm really enjoying this awesome game, and I just want to kill this X Boss, I'm going to buy this gun. At that point in the game, do I really need to know that it's an NFT? You know, I don't know. But what about another situation where Okay. Now, as a player, I've gone and, you know, I've progressed through all the levels. I've been playing the game for many, many, many hours. I've not killed the boss and I've not given or looted this fantastic, really, really rare gun. Also at that stage, do I really need to know that as an NFT at that point in time? Can it happen a little bit later? So I think it's, it just comes down to that to really, and this is again, kind of the foundation of what I'm talking about today is the game studio should have the full control and power. over the player experience within their game. And so they can then dictate and they can at what point of the player's journey does it make sense to them To tell them. Hey, this is actually a tokenized item that you have full control over. Would you agree with that? What do you think?

Guest: 32:06

I would agree to some extent but I I do think yeah I agree to some extent but I do think players should should know that they are buying an nfc You know tokens that are everything they focus in value So I think only player buys an nfc8 because you should be aware that this is something That has, uh, some sort of monetary value in it. So, uh, well, I don't know. Who knows the fact? Who knows the fact? But I do agree with you in a way. Player experience, uh, is important. But I don't think that players need to know the financial monetary values that are attached to NFCs. So, that's just my opinion though.

Carl: 32:38

I think you'll also get into a situation where We've got different kinds, players play games for different reasons. Okay. And you're going to have one player that actually doesn't really care that, that, that it's an NFT at all. And you're going to have one player that just wants to hold it just to play the game. Um, so I think it is a tricky, it's a tricky one that, that game teams really need to have full ownership over and control over so that they can decide based on the players that they're targeting. What makes the most sense for them?

Guest: 33:01

All right, I think I agree with Doug. I agree with Bob. Thank you very much.

NoAutopilot: 33:04

So we had, uh, another guest raise their hand. So GDWizard. So GD, I brought you up. Again, we'd like to try and shut this down in a couple minutes if we can, but definitely don't want to cut off someone sharing their opinions and feedback. So feel free to,

Guest2: 33:15

uh, take it away. Hey, thank you so much, and I'm going to be really quick. Cheers for having me up on the panel, guys. I got a, uh, an answer, response, and hopefully a, uh, future for that, uh, question that got brought up. It's, it's exceptional. Uh, should the player know if they're going to get the, uh, I've come out with something personally and this isn't anything to do with the show, it's just steps that I want you guys to listen to. Would you consider this the same problem? I've got a card. This card is a game. I can sit at the table with you right now and play this game. Okay, when I bought this card, I agreed to buy this card. I'll be all happy with the fair decision that the buyer and the seller made an agreement. This person is buying a card that is playable. The answer is yes. He's now bought a fungible asset. Now, let's say this card has a, I don't know, a QR code on it, and he can access something on the internet. Well, would we have to tell him that it's a Web 2 game now? No, or maybe not. Well, let's say this Web 2 game now connects to OpenSea. Where you can see the asset, which is a digital version of your physical asset, which is the game. Is, do we still need to tell them what he has? Or, should we take a better step and be smarter Web3ists? Educate the person each step of the way. Uh, the asset that I, or the product, or the project, or whatever you want to call what I'm building, is totally not even Web3 anymore. So much, I've walked into the steps of, what do people actually want? A shill spill, whip and flip, and hype and dipe, and you name it guys, come on, we're over this shit. I wanted to bring something else to the world and what I think I've done is, without spoiling Web 3, but without cursing into, uh, the in real life world, is give people the option to learn as they progress. We call that, uh, uh, L I P, learn and progress, and what they do is they step into a world that they already know and if they want, they can click that link and they can read about that resource. And when they learn search, they click another link or, uh, uh, an end or they answer a quiz and now they get assets, uh, I'm sorry, now they get access to resources. How to make a Web3 wallet. And if they don't want to go there, they can stop right there. But they've just been educated, and now the education has brought them to, now you choose as a human. I think that is a better progression, rather than saying you have to tell a player, that it's a Web3 game, or it's other. Because I never got told by Clash of, uh, Clans, or Clash Royale, or name another Web3 gaming thing that's popped up in the past. They never said to me, hey, by the way, If you don't pay, it's gonna take you 12 years to catch up to still be 25 percent behind the end of the game, or the maxed out game. I've been playing that game for almost 10 years now, and I haven't paid a cent, but I'm one of the, the max players in that game that's never paid a cent either, and I'm still at least 25 percent from the top. And I play daily, and I've put in a lot of time over the years, but that's all I really wanted to say guys, uh, if anyone's got comments on that, cool, but that's just my

JRP: 35:58

piece. I really quickly want to say that. Clash of Clans, uh, narrative there, uh, example is amazing. Uh, someone needs to like make that itself into an MFT.

Carl: 36:07

Yeah, I agree. I think it's, it's a, it's a super well thought through framework that you just listed there. And I think, yeah, at the end of the day, again, it comes down to who are the players that you're targeting? I think that that framework can work quite well, quite nicely for, you know, if you're trying to just target traditional gamers full stop, then yeah, you're missing making some key decisions for that specific user experience.

Guest2: 36:26

Oh, not only that, we don't want to limit it, right? If I just sold a game. Well, boring. Well, shouldn't we get a bit more, uh, to the point? Um, my game specifically is ages six plus, and people said, why six plus? I said, do the math. Come on, at four, you can't tell dad, hey, I need this game because at six you can't. And damn it, dad at 45 needs a pretty good reason to tell the wife why he's going to spend a cent on anything unless he's doing undercover. And usually that's because he's Buying NFTs and he's hoping to make a flip to make the white hat. We know stuff in real life stuff. So why not work with the world instead of trying to work

NoAutopilot: 36:59

against it? Well, I can, uh, I can tell you guys, I really do value the community and the vibe and the conversations that we're having on this space today. Great discussions. Carl, Team Sequence, thank you for taking time out of your busy day to kind of share with us the different tooling that you're building to make this journey slightly less painful. For our builders, Juan, as always, exceptional to co host things with you. Thank you for joining us today. But yeah, folks, I think at this point, we'll go ahead and we'll wrap this thing up. Carl, thanks again. Sequence, thanks again. And, uh, everybody have a great day.

Guest2: 37:29

Thanks, everyone.

NoAutopilot: 37:29

Bye.