Building the Metaverse with Jon Radoff

Do you want to learn more about scaling customer acquisition for an online product? The lessons here will apply whether you are shipping a game, a metaverse experience or any type of mobile application. Eric Seufert worked at legendary game publishers like Rovio, Wooga, and Digital Chocolate--where he literally wrote the book on Freemium Economics for games. Eric's concern for several years has been scaling games by optimizing unit economics and accessing scalable user acquisition channels. In this conversation, Jon and Eric talk about how the market for mobile user acquisition has changed; how the market for advertising networks has evolved; and even how the strategy for game marketing has shifted from the "Harry Crane" measurement paradigm to the "Don Draper" paradigm which is all about audience resonance. We cover the differences (or lack thereof) in performance vs. brand marketing; how new privacy rules such as ATT (App Tracking Transparency) have impacted the user acquisition markets; and how to staff a user acquisition team at your publisher. If you're looking for an overview of how to gain access to the mass market of consumers on mobile--both the history, present and possible future--this is the conversation you'll want to hear!

Three-way conversation between Jon Radoff and two amazing technology experts: Keith Adams was Chief Architect for Slack--the pervasive chat platform used by hundreds of millions of people every day (fun fact: did you know that Slack started as a game company?) Ali El Rhermoul works with Jon at Beamable, where Ali is CTO. We covered engineering philosophy, and new technologies like serverless and microservies as paradigms that live games can use to scale up. We also talk about team dynamics, agile approaches, high-velocity iteration, reaching product-market fit, and the values that an engineering team can incorporate to bring curiosity and success to a product endeavor.

Alexander Brazie has built a career working on the design of some of the largest online games: World of Warcraft and League of Legends. We start with the inspiring story of how Alexander landed a career in game design, starting as a teenage game developer. Along the way he's learned how to create amazing, engaging, sustainable game businesses--as well as how the business models to support them have evolved. We talk about MMORPGs, MOBAs, free-to-play (f2p), subscriptions and NFT-based games.

Avatars are a way for you project your identity into virtual space. In the metaverse, this will also mean the ability to transport your identity from place to place, or to take on different identities as your mood or the experience calls for. Along with that is the rise of digital fashion: both a new form of self-expression and a boon to the creator economy for artists and designers. Cathy Hackl and I discuss Roblox, avatar platforms including Ready Player Me, as well as digital fashion platforms such as Fabricant and others who are building within the blockchain/NFT ecosystem.

The metaverse is opening up a new range of opportunities for online jobs: one of these is in the realm of online performance. Emma (known online as "Swebliss") is a Twitch streamer and TikTok personality who has assembled an audience approaching a million people by streaming her gameplay and artistry. How did she do it, what are the opportunities in streaming, and how does one "break in" to this business? What are some of the challenges and problems with being a streamer today? We also cover the challenges women face around online toxicity. If you're curious about the personal and business side of the live-streaming business, this is your chance to learn more about one of the original "play to earn" businesses in gaming.

Finn is the founder of VR, AR and video game production company Chicken Waffle (creator of VR games including Baby Hands and Shadow of Valhalla); co-founder of virtual music concert company The Wave XR; and VR-based comedy club Failed to Render. I caught up with Finn before he headed down to Art Basel Miami where he planned to show off some of his work in metaverse art. This conversation covers a lot of ground: we cover how far virtual reality (VR) has come in the last few years, and the opportunities as it expands into AR and new hardware like smartglasses (e.g., Snap Spectacles)--and then get into some of the new experiences that involve art, music and even comedy. We talk about video games, and applications for the blockchain and NFTs to support creators across this ecosystem. This is a conversation I know you'll enjoy if you are intrigued by any of these topics.

Mitch Zamara is a veteran game designer who started in the free-to-play (F2P) mobile industry at Zynga and is now with Million on Mars, where he's designing an NFT-based game experience based on the colonization of Mars. The past year has seen enormous growth in the play-to-earn (P2E) segment of blockchain gaming. Since there's been plenty of coverage of games like Axie Infinity and NFT-based games in general, Mitch and I decided to the use the hour to dig deeper into issues of game design, as well as opportunities for growth. We talked about the non-blockchain origins of earning money from game-playing--which includes areas like esports, modding, etc.--and discussed how this may inform the future of P2E as it starts to blend the distinction between players and designers. We also discussed some of the game design issues for game designers thinking of making the transition from F2P (or other business models) to P2E.

This was one of the most fun conversations I've had on Building the Metaverse: I spoke with Lucas Wilson about music. Lucas Wilson is CEO of Supersphere, which produces immersive VR experiences for music. He's worked with major artists including Billy Eilish, Angels & Airwaves, Kid Cudi, Chance the Rapper, Steve Aoki, Major Lazer, Wiz Khalifa, Offset & Friends, Post Malone and Paul McCartney. In this conversation, we spoke about how musicians are innovating in the metaverse: we cover live performance in AR and VR--including some of the performances that have happened in Roblox and Fortnite; the Web3 connection to music including NFTs, the signing of Kingship (band based on Bored Apes Yacht Club), Grimes and Artificial Intelligence; the challenges of syncing multiple artists on the internet... and how music can bring us all together in new ways in immersive experiences we've never had.

Diversity & Inclusion--making a more equitable future for everyone to contribute to the metaverse--is the focus of this conversation with Trinidad Hermida. She was the head of Diversity and Inclusion for Niantic, the creators of Pokemon Go. Trinidad is now running her own consulting firm that advises game and technology companies how to bring "equity through empathy" into their organizations. We discussed many of the barriers that underrepresented people find when getting involved in the game industry (as well as technology, more broadly) as well as the reasons why companies ought to rise to the challenge and build bridges to these communities. We also get into Web3 and DAOs and why the newness, community-orientation and lack of institutional barriers may open up more opportunities to people of all backgrounds.

Nicole Lazzaro is a neuroscientist, a leading expert on emotion in games, gamification, and augmented reality. In this episode Jon and Nicole discuss how we can apply the learnings from emotion in games (such as Nicole's "4 Keys 2 Fun" model) to the metaverse, as well as Nicole's work within augmented reality.

James Zhang is the CEO of Concept Art House, which recently sold a Frank Miller NFT for $840K and raised over $25M to expand their business. In this episode of Building the Metaverse, Jon and James talk about the creator economy for NFTs, dispel some common misconceptions, and review the opportunity for artists and collectors.

Evo Heyning talk about intelligent ecosystems, virtual beings, artificial intelligence, AIs--as well as avatars, creativity and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).

In this episode of Building the Metaverse, Jon has a conversation with game designer, entrepreneur and neuroscientist Amy Jo Kim. This episode focused on game development; this is a key episode to listen to if you're a game developer, but also helpful if you're building any metaverse application inspired by gaming. We discuss the solo-to-social trend; the "games as economies" trend, the technologists-to-artists trend, and the "community first" game development trend. A few games we talk about include Axie Infinity, Roblox and Undertale.

Raph Koster is a legendary game designer behind Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies. In this episode, we discuss the metaverse, virtual worlds, governance, game economies, creativity and everything in between.

I discuss the creative platforms like Unity, Roblox and Unreal that are being used to construct the metaverse--and delve into the history of creative technologies overall.

What will you do in the metaverse? I discuss applications including games, esports, social activities, shopping, real estate, travel, education, training, fitness, live music, volumetric live-streaming and immersive theater.

This episode covers the major trends that are shaping the metaverse: digital identity (the mainstream adoption of virtual personas and items); the competition between open standards and closed platforms; artificial intelligence; cybernetics (AR, VR, neural, brain-computer interfaces); blockchain; low code and no code platforms; simulating reality; distributed networks.

In this first episode of "Building the Metaverse," Josh and Jon meet up to discuss what the metaverse is all about. Topics include: how it is the next generation of the Internet; the creator economy; the huge influence of games on what the metaverse is becoming; and the categories of companies who are working towards it.