 Well, if you're intrigued to find out this is the panel discussion you've been waiting for join me in welcoming our international experts on the topic to get an understanding of the future of online gaming. I would like to thank our associate partner local home of Indian gaming who has partnered on this and please join me in welcoming. I need to find the other founder of local we've got Michael who's the international sector director, he sports and gaming you go from Germany. We've got Jacob Shradar, the GM of eSports at Zen Sports USA we've got Marcus Howard, the author of innovative gaming and eSports and also a member of blockchain game alliance and we've of course got Neera Shruparal, the head of mobile and emerging tech group and who has a gladly accepted to be the session chair for this discussion. Well, it's going to be a great one and we're really for looking forward to a great discussion I'm sure and the mighty task of moderating is in your hands so Neera please take off the library. Thank you. Thank you so much. Question to the guest today login with MR or VR. While the session was on I just put it on I was my gaming zone. Great start Neera so over to you. All right guys this is pretty much a subject which we all are super passionate about so it doesn't even need a heads up or say I would say let's just spend about one minute on what's keeping us busy these days on the topics which are not just announced. Something that's keeping me super busy is this entire wave of metaverse and I've been busy creating a lot of sci-fi experiences here and in the Indian market getting my brands on board as well. So the India's first wedding you guys must have heard about it that was completely conceptualized by us and we got some of our brands like Coca Cola to be part of it. One of the one of my personal favorites on metaverse is the work which we did on Mondelees for Cadbury silk wherein we created a moon dating experience one of the lucky couples from Mumbai. This is a lot of sci-fi work which also happens on the gaming space right from Roblox to Fortnite to Sony PlayStation as well so we are actually getting a lot of our brands immersed in those experiences creating a lot of interesting brand integrations out there. So my question to begin with would be for Marcus being a big fan of your books and I've been reading it in a big way and when Imran came up to me I was just reading up more about you and then I see your post on LinkedIn. My first question to Marcus would be how will the metaverse grow the esports space? Great question, Narajan. Thank you all for joining. I believe that the metaverse is going to give esports teams the ability to have kind of scalable revenue and engagement opportunities and shout out to Lowell Stevens. He wrote a fantastic paper about that so you haven't seen it, definitely go check that out. But the ability to basically create these digital assets, these digital experiences that don't have the traditional kind of fixed price cost of in-person events. It also has the ability to kind of activate a wider variety of brands because as we all know the metaverse is really just the gaming industry. So if you start to get more brands into the gaming industry now they have the opportunity to recognize the value to have this digital presence and then that allows us to grow the total audience of brands that are engaging. What's your take on mixed reality? Because one of my favorite players in India which is going to rewrite the history of mixed reality in India is GeoTesseract. They're going to be bundling up the mixed reality hardware with GeoFiber. It's going to enter our households in less than six months. It's going to be pretty much mainstream is what I feel. How would that pretty much drive the esport wave? What is supposed to go mainstream? I would say for esports to go mainstream. What role would mixed reality play? I think one of the challenges we have with scale is that there's still a stigma against video games and then by extension esports people don't believe that you can be a sports athlete if you're sitting in your chair playing at a console or computer or mobile. And so what XR creates is the ability to have this kind of full body motion full interaction that you associate with traditional sports. And then in that way not only are you having more activity so it's seen as more accepted but then you also extend the amount of engagement opportunities. Extended reality means not only can you have esports from your home but you can have it at let's call it a Chuck E. Cheese or a stadium or there's simulation software where there's kind of extended reality bicycle riding. And I don't know if you've heard of Hado which is basically digital dodgeball. I just had an interview last week or earlier this week. The gentleman who's getting ready to do with use extended reality do the same thing to motor sports that laser tag has done to paintball. So you're driving an electric go cart but it feels like you're playing Mario Kart because you can shoot lasers there are bombs and all kinds of power ups. So it really helps kind of extend traditional sports I think kind of creating this hybrid area between traditional and virtual where again there's just this massive opportunity to go mainstream. Alright Jacob this one is for you. How to get rid of barriers of entry to blockchain games. That's that's that's a question which keeps cropping in when we have conversations with a lot of our clients. What's awesome. Of course, yeah, you know also thank you for having me it's a pleasure to be here. I would say the blockchain in general right is, you know huge for gaming. It basically provides players the ability to changeably own their assets and games. And because the blockchain is extendable and and never sleeps right those games are or those those assets are much more liquid than assets and video games have ever been before. Right because these blockchain games are pretty new and there's only select few of them that have really taken off. You see prices, you know that are extremely high and games like splinter lands and actually infinity to just get into the game. That was, you know I would say a year and a half ago that was a really big deal and really hard for people to kind of get into blockchain gaming. Right and and the ability to lower the very entry is just what's going to make it go mainstream, right or give it that push that it needs so you know what we've seen is card renting asset renting and kind of in actually infinity specifically with their guilds just the ability for you know users who have the assets to basically lend them to other users right that's huge and that's what's going to help push blockchain gaming into the masses. Some games are doing it better than others right splinter lands it's actually on the blockchain they have coded into the smart contracts basically such or decentralized lending. Right and actually they do it with scholarships which is slightly centralized I know they're working at a solution to make it more decentralized but just in general it's that way and that kind of, you know, that lending and the ability to rent that's really going to lower the very entry. All right, questions so on it out now. I know they've been doing a lot of work on now web three and gaming. Why is there so much excitement around this. Okay I think as the other. My voice is going through my audio where it's working well it's working well I could hear you I don't know if you can hear me. I can I can go on. Okay, super. Yeah, I mean the big exciting thing is that love that you know with local right there. So, so you know for us, there are two things right gaming is going to become more immersive with them with the 5G coming in mobile computing is going to get better. And so you're going to finally see people are going to immerse themselves in these worlds it's already happened with desktop you know you were on Oculus Oculus price point is not too different from a mobile phone. So you're going to see people going towards more immersive entertainment more immersive experiences and gaming is obviously the easiest and most fun way to get in there right if you played. You know you were talking about I spent an inordinate amount of time playing cricket on the Oculus really fun game it's not like super advanced in terms of its graphics but the basic gameplay is great. I kind of feeling like you're actually in a stadium and you know I spent other times on an app like wonder where I'm just wandering around different parts of the world, and in the lockdown that's an unbelievable feeling but also for someone who may not have the money yet to go do that. When you combine that sort of immersive experience with what web three is going to do which is, it's allowing you to actually own a piece of, you know the web in some sense. The fact that you can own your own skins you can own a certain digital merchandise that allows for a very, very different level of of engagement and of fandom right I own this cap I own a Liverpool cap I'm a big Liverpool fan, whether local lives or dies or the Liverpool look lives or dies I own this cap right but tomorrow you know if if some of these other games which are popular today we bought, let's say you spend $10,000, you know you love the game, if it dies, you got nothing, you will be left with zero. And that doesn't happen in these online worlds now so I think the fact that you can combine immersion with ownership means it's the next level of fandom. And I think as Marcus was suggesting earlier, there's no reason that through smart contracts you cannot even, you can't actually control the clubs or make certain key decisions with those clubs right so you know just the same way a shareholders agreement today enables shareholders to govern an enterprise the same way a doubt is being governed by smart contracts or certain things like everything is not 100% decentralized yet but we are going to a place where you could say that hey there's a bid on a player who's going to spend $100 million we have to get everybody to say yes because that's that's a major decision right or if you want to change the stadium if you want to sell the stadium right like if I as a fan don't ever want my stadium to ever lose So that you can't do today right and I think a lot what people don't appreciate enough is the best sporting clubs in the world have a lot of history to them and that history comes to fans and loyalty that's been built over time and I think both these things are happening together and I think that makes it an amazing and exciting time to work in the industry. Like you say every time I get on to my Oculus and an Oculus is pretty much much cheaper than a mobile device like you mentioned right and every time I get into it and I'm playing a game I start thinking how do I integrate my brand's problems take back on to this real estate so I was just playing an AR puzzle game which was about fixing Taj Mahal altogether and I was thinking why can't I get Fevicol in you know like put a Fevicol and get this all together we used to do a lot of interesting stuff with So if you run out of birds you go and watch AV out there you get a pop up bird and you can just go along and play the game right so what's your take on advertisers in this new age world of online gaming predominantly how will it go mainstream Is this question to me I can Yeah I'm continuing with you Yeah so for I mean look you know having built a large content company like pocket races which is a leader in his field today you know we built it when digital video was not so big in India in 2015 right and gaming I was saying from 2018 is a mainstream entertainment format and it's only in 2021 that we've seen it grow in that fashion I think advertisers always going to be reactive the best advertisers will obviously take a leaf forward early but attention is going to move and when attention moves advertisers will certainly move and advertising is when the consumers happy consuming that advertising without thinking it's you know something disruptive right so that's one form of advertising when you come to immersive certain things that the brands will advertisers will obviously get into because it's it's where the future is it's where attention will move same thing with gaming and they're an interesting format right currently you think that they're only banner ads but you could have audio ads which while you're playing a game it's not as disruptive right we're still progressing along how what different advertising formats can mean even as the previous sponsor BMW saying I mean we've just done an e-sports tournament where you know their integration with one of the phone brands was playing and people didn't drop off because they saw it as a validation of their community right but I think there's lots of interesting ways in which advertisers will come into the mix and even you know the the newest form of advertisers will find a way of engaging those communities in a very meaningful manner so you know whether it's in a play to one sort of situation or even on a local where you know let's say if you know you're trying to support I as a user I'm trying to support an athlete you know and you can support to which I can send to them or you know Pepsi can say I'm going to support it and every fan of this particular person every single word so good is free from my side right now suddenly like Pepsi is putting itself as a you know as a fan with with the common you know user so I think there are a lot of interesting ways for you know whether it's you know more niche brands for mainstream brands and I think what this is seeing in gaming in India is that it's breaking geographical and you know in good grounds on with a phone you can start showing your showing your skill and actually to to to Max's point on e-sports earlier as well what can happen is that you're you know if you were for example buying card collectibles or you're playing these games which are the modern fantasy games with NFTs in them today if you have no chance of being a scout in a in a year or two if you show people that you know e-sports owners that look look at my portfolio of picks that I made you know you it's completely something that can be you know verified by them so because the provenance is there so suddenly you have completely new job and a completely new way of getting that job very similar to how say you know digital video where you can now just make you know point and shoot make a video and suddenly the new digital stars came up that as you think about the future of e-sports of sport itself this is a simple way in which people can start participating and that means again regardless of where you are your skill will put you forward so I think it's it's an exciting time and that advertisers can actually come into that fold as well and and really really you know build interesting clubs you know football clubs you know how interesting perspective that would be sold on it I said if I may I would if I may I would would really like like to build on what was said earlier because why how it actually shows that if you find a way to non intrusively bring yourself into your game. This is the perfect way to sell something because it's not perceived as advertisement it's perceived as part of the game. There was an example over here with well finally in my home market in Germany, where a frozen food brand, which has nothing to do with with GTA brought themselves into the game branded all the stores over the more or less Christmas period with their branding and put their their their stuff in the stores for sale. I looked into the data because I found the super intriguing and the consideration rate so not only yeah awareness and so on but really would people buy their product jumped up five times as high as before. And this is showing what a decent audience you can reach and what the effects could be if you find a way which is super easy to do as you saw here then with a clever at but advertisement campaign, which is not even perceived as advertisement but being part of the part of the game. That's that's that's brilliant so we started with the markers with the perspective on metaverse gaming and how mixed reality is going to have a play out there. We moved to Jacobson we covered this entire space of blockchain gaming and I know that gave us an absolutely amazing perspective on the online game side of it and advertisers play out there. My question to Michael would be more on the lines of cryptocurrencies. So how do you see esports fans see the world of cryptocurrencies. Yeah, this is the question that is just discussed heavily. I mean, a building on on markets points there's still so many misconceptions around those type groups and so on. Thank God we are amongst process so I don't have to Michael do they really embrace it. Do they really understand the general population. That is what I was what I was going to to aim at. Yes, they do, and much much more than the general population. They're not even understand it better. They use it more often, and they, they also see this as a new way of investment. Fair we have a target group here that is tech savvy has a higher share of people that are at universities studying it and so on. So, there is an affinity between between those two but this is not not all to explain it. So we again we have a super young and have a target group here that is a bit more towards newer technologies being being more on the forefront of things trying things out being a gamer at heart doesn't hurt here. So, in general, the general population is still leaning back on cryptocurrency. I mean, Joe Biden just yesterday issued that the US government has to look into into cryptocurrency and find a way how to really deal with it. So this is more or less the standpoint of the general population with the sports fans being much much more advanced and in this area. So what I'm going to take on a lot of these gaming platforms are now becoming in bits and pieces I would say are becoming brand unsafe. Popa compliance is something which is keeping a lot of brands away from these platforms children online protection act. So a lot of a lot of these platforms have got a lot of messy content which is appearing so so how is the ecosystem countering that space now. Anyone anyone can can maybe take this question. I'm happy to take it from a given the year stream platform and we see some of these things. I think as a platform you have to put regardless whether there's an act on there's no act you have to put safety as a paramount. You know, KPI for yourself and your platform. So what we've done is, we have no tolerance for any sort of, you know, loot content we have an active team that moderates that content. We also have kind of cutting edge features built using ML which quickly find out whether some, you know, whether there's bad language etc that's been used. And that's always a cop and robber type situation you you do something they they figure out how to go right but put your effort forward. Do that and you're on all the certainly on all the. Hey, can you can you hear me now. Hello. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I was saying basically for the some of the larger streams you always have manual moderators and for all the individual guys they have to be moderated and going forward. You've given streamers their own moderator tools and going forward we will be making that a pretty key requirement for you to end up having a monetization channel etc so we're making it a key priority and and I think other platforms which are serious are doing the same. Sure, sure. Jacob another just a follow up to the question which I asked you what's going to bring the blockchain gaming to the mainstream. Of course. Yeah, so you know right now blockchain gaming, you know as I mentioned earlier there's only a few games that really are popular to you know a really great extent. I would say bringing blockchain gaming to consoles and being able to connect a wallet to the Xbox or to the PS4 is really going to be a huge step for you know the mainstream popularity of blockchain gaming. They can kind of do what they do with with mobile blockchain games where you're not able to make purchases, because doing so with the 30% fee that distributors take would be really difficult. But you know, we've seen some blockchain games go mobile right skyweaver just did it the game looks awesome. It's great, but you know to get console is really the next level of mainstream gamers so I think once that's kind of able to be done blockchain gaming can really How about cryptocurrency is the gamers do they have a different view on cryptocurrencies. The point which Michael mentioned. I would say certainly, I would say gamers are, you know, more, you know, it was there was a scene from ready player one, right where the main character runs out of gas and all of a sudden he sells something on his body, and basically coins poof up and he's able to load those into his car, and that's gas right and that just you know kind of as soon as I saw that I was like oh my gosh that's cryptocurrency. Right that's the ability for the assets in a game to be unbelievably liquid to the fact that you can sell something. You know, move it to another chain potentially and taken another asset kind of instantaneously and that's what dangerous need right there's so many small transactions and gaining so much micro transactions that it's you know kind of perfect for cryptocurrency. Marcus has something to add to this point. You're having a laugh about at that point. Marcus you want to go ahead, Michael, go ahead. Thanks. So, totally building on was one on what what Jacob just said what our data totally underlines this because to be fair comparing eSports fans to the general population might not be the best comparison to draw here, but eSports fans as a example of the gamers is more the correct way way to go and yeah gamers they as you said Jacob. Well, exclamation mark. Yes, they have a deeper understanding they have they already use it and still in this group, which is a huge group. The eSports fans still are way, way forward so they even use cryptocurrency more than than than gamers per se, but still the application of cryptocurrency and so on. To be fair, I'm the only one in the people that I know that that has some cryptocurrency and they all look at you. This bitcoin stuff you do that. Yes, I do that. What's about it's not like I'm going to throttle or anything it's cryptocurrency so man, dude. Yeah. How do we get this into the general population like this, talking about it. This is nothing strange and it's just, man, come on. This is just the normal way to do things. So Marcus now you're on. Yeah, I agree with everything that Jacob and Michael said and then think we all understand that you don't have to teach gamers about digital items and digital currencies right like I started playing video games when I was six with Super Mario Brothers three that you can't see on the camera because of the background let me try this. Here we go. There you can see it right. And so you collect coins, which are digital currencies and when you collect 100 coins you get an extra life, which is a digital item you know their mushrooms and the raccoon tail all of that. So it's part and parcel the experience for gaming. And as everyone here is mentioned like what you can't do right now is like basically you invest into this ecosystem you basically don't get anything back beyond entertainment and nothing against the value of entertainment obviously we all love the value of entertainment with blockchain gaming is going to kind of take it to the next level where you literally have you know this nirvana opportunity to play to earn, you know, I don't have to be, I don't have to have a yacht right from playing video games but if I could pay my rent and get my groceries by playing video games like a happy person I would do that right now. Okay guys just to follow this a quick one on your book here we are we are a big fan of your book out there how the gaming community. Your book. Thank you. Thank you thank you I appreciate that yeah and and I actually have a team from India and I don't know if you can let me do this again. Oh, I can't see it I wish I could turn the background. Oh there was part of it. So I can see that you can see that so what you can't see because of the background is basically, this is a team from India. So I have six, six continents represented in the book. You know, and actually it's been distributed now to six continents, just as from the previous panel we discussed here like education is the key to get this mainstream adoption so I built this book to educate gamers who are kids and gamers of all ages but also parents teachers ecosystem leaders, you know, mayors and influencers about gaming and esports the $180 billion gaming industry the billion dollar esports industry, and in this actually have a dedicated chapter one for the metaverse and a separate dedicated chapter for NFTs blockchain crypto. So as people are reading this book and playing the demos that are included in the book. They learn about this space and actually I also have an NFT that allows you to view the entire book virtually and has a bunch of extra bonus content that's bound to the NFT so it's not just a JPEG and I don't want to go on that that soapbox but there's extra functionality to it so that people as they're getting the book they're learning about cryptos and blockchain and the metaverse in the process. Super. Just as closing comments I would like to hear from you guys maybe one minute each on future of online gaming how do you guys see it all evolving over a period of time. Yeah, all I'll say is, especially in the Indian context, they're gonna use this word gamers in five years because everybody's going to be a gamer right like we don't say are you a television viewer or like you watch series like everybody's watching its numbers so large. And I think, you know, as you know, the, you know, other panelists have said, I think blockchain is really going to create a new wealth redistribution. You're going to see a lot of a lot more people able to participate get new job. And I think one of the reasons that we haven't seen blockchain really all the crypto really go into the gaming community much in India is because it's really hard right now. So that's something that, you know, companies like us are going to tackle it, people to get crypto even if it's a small number that so that they don't actually see the difference. Once your experience, your experience becomes easy enough. Oh, and it's really exciting place and as a gamer I couldn't be happier I get paid to do this so you know it's a tap dance to work when when you have a job like so I'm excited. What we heard you Jacob you want to go next. Absolutely. So to me the the future of online gaming is more interactivity right it's more peer to peer features within games that allow people to connect. It's it's kind of going away from single player games where it's a storyline and you're not able to play with with others or live in a virtual world where you can interact kind of like the sandbox or other Metaverse platforms. I think we're really moving at a place where it's all about interactivity it's all about kind of being able to play games with your friends right if you can't play with your friend if you can't kind of show off a layer of personal expression through a game. It's not going to be popular and I think that's where online gaming is going. Marcus you want to go next. Sure. And I want to give a shout out to the team in India Boolean Network, they were actually getting ready to launch their platform so glad to make introductions for anyone who's interested. What they're doing what I believe is the future of gaming is this centralizing access for opportunity, because they're allowing basically independent creators to have 360 degrees of monetization but I think in the future what you'll see is gaming redefining play experience, but you know the way we do education and workforce development business engagement, not just like business to consumer but business to business, because again 60, you know 66% of Americans and nearly half the world's population plays video games. We'll see video games redefine like how we experience our personal and business lives the same way that we have seen social media do that over the last 20 years. Michael you want to round up the conversations for us to have exactly 30 seconds. Sure. Thank you. There's almost everything has been said said I think that mobile mobile devices should not be underestimated having this things here always with us makes the access of gaming easier and gives us leisure time whenever we need it. And crypto currencies are here to stay. Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for this interesting panel conversation. Thank you before I am for evangelizing the space of gaming. Interesting times ahead and a panelist today shared some of the really insightful data points on gaming and future of online gaming so stay tuned on to this event. Have a good conference guys. Thank you so much. Thank you so much Neeraj. I will have to say cheers to everyone who's taken out the valuable time everyone across the various parts across the world I know there are different time zones and I don't want to get to that. But I'd really like to appreciate all your effort for joining in and your valuable intakes. Thank you.