Gary Bracey on Terra Virtua’s VR entertainment platform

0:00I'm Ashlyn Addison from event chain for investmentpitch media and FinTech news network and today on blockchain interviews we have Gary Bracy the CEO of Tara Virtua welcome to the show Gary it's a pleasure to have you here great to see you Ashton thanks for asking me awesome I'm looking forward to hearing a little bit about Tara virtua you know what are you guys doing in the VR world

0:21and how are you incorporating blockchain technology sure well Tara Virtua is a VR entertainment platform an inclusive entertainment platform that's designed to deliver all forms of entertainment in VR so not just games which is what everyone immediately thinks about but also live events like sports and concerts which are currently being filmed in VR and then we grab to eSports

0:50and and all sorts of other packs of passive entertainment such as movies this is all on the backbone of a blockchain economy so there is a marketplace there are there are social environments and we're also incorporating something called terraformer which is a user-generated tool for everyone even yourself to enable people to create VR experiences

1:20themselves whether they want to make a racetrack or a roller coaster or any sort of game or immersive experience they can use terraformer very simply create their own tool and all of this generates an economy whether people want to charge for being for others to enjoy this experience or pay for to play a proper game a professional game or pay to watch a sport the whole economy is

1:49driven on the blockchain and of course if we're talking about a creative tool for people to make their own experiences then we need some sort of security to secure their IP their invention so think of it as a drm high protection and all of that will be protected on the blockchain so if you create something that is read on the blockchain any associated revenue

2:17connected with that experience will automatically be PU that's awesome so it's actually really interesting to hear that you know a lot of people just see VR as games and as you said it's really entertainment I could see going into sports going into music venues any any form of entertainment so it's interesting concept that you guys have where people are allowed to create their

2:44environment and then I guess they can monetize in their own way so sorry go ahead no I'm just gonna say do you guys see utilizing the blockchain just for the transaction purposes of being able to produce content and then sell that to somebody else directly or how our users monetizing their own creations well what we want to do is I mentioned very briefly that that Tara burger is going

3:13to be a very social experience also and we're going to be encouraging hopefully a thriving community to be built up so that when let's say I mentioned earlier a racetrack so let's say for instance you want to make a racetrack and create a car racing car driving experience in VR now you might be quite creative to to design racetracks and fun ways to drive

3:40around but you're not a very good artist but let's say I'm a great artist so I can design a number of 3d cars that you can then license from me within Tara virtue and terraformer and you can use within your experience within your game so the people have really really cool cars to drive so we're fostering that community and of course again that's on the blockchain my cars that I create are

4:07on the blockchain abayas more contracts you license those cars and I derived a proportion of the revenue that you generate from selling people or letting people enjoy your experience that you've built as an example that's really cool so is the actual content that people produce on the blockchain or so the ownership rights and to further you know to further extenuate on that

4:31question does Tara virtue I need its own blockchain or are they backing on top of the major block chains like aetherium and does it need its own cryptocurrency inside of the platform as well right without cryptocurrency is based on aetherium because obviously we have to have some other smart contract base for this and at the moment we're looking at GRC 20 although we are looking at

4:55another derivative because another element of what we're doing are digital assets and creating starting with our avatars because obviously being a social platform you need to be represented by some sort of avatar within that platform so you're going to be able to select and customize your own avatar which again are going to be comprised of digital comprised as digital assets and you can

5:23select to have a rare one or a common one whichever one you like which can be traded with other people together with accessories like hats and different clothing styles and will actually be licensing brands so we'll be hopefully building a thriving economy on the NFT side as well the non tangible token side and which is obviously becoming very very popular in the culture at the

5:48moment yeah that makes sense so you guys actually have so many things that you are able to branch out into you know because as you mentioned VR has a lot of different avenues so how far are you guys right now on the platform and how long have you been working on it so far the platform has been in development for around about 18 months we've got a development team of 30 people who've

6:11been working on this for actually almost two years now we have a working prototype and we've partnered with a company called wax who are very big in non fungible tokens in digital assets and we're creating I feel like a showroom for digital assets at the moment when people buy digital assets such as guns or knives or anything fun and all they can do is look at these

6:39things on a computer Green what we're going to do is bring those into a create an immersive environment so that like a little like a trophy room so that their friends can come in they can have a look at it they can manipulate it and I'm just have fun with it so you can show off the assets that you have that's awesome yeah I know I could see how when you're buying

7:01certain things especially the current online experience right now you really aren't immersed in it you can't really see it and to be able to see a 3d representation would make all the difference so that's awesome yes yes so looking forward what are some of the limitations that you think Tara virtua will face as you guys expand into the VR world a big

7:26issue I guess to be completely transparent is the adoption of the VR hardware it's been very very slow VR was was launched a couple of years ago to a lot of expectation and it really didn't fulfill that expectation and that was for a number of reasons it was very expensive you needed a very powerful PC it was tethered which meant that you had a wire

7:52attached to your PC which sort of restricted your movements and didn't give you full freedom but most importantly in my opinion it was lacking killer content in order to drive adoption of a new hardware platform and I've been involved in video games for 35 years now so I've seen many evolutions and iterations of games consoles and video games themselves and for something

8:18to succeed hardware wise it needs to be supported by some really really captivating software and have never really happened there was a lot of fun stuff but it was more novelty and what's happening now I'm seeing an awful lot of new products in development primarily games which really take the art to the next level and having learned the mistakes that have been made a lot of

8:44people felt a little bit nauseas playing some games because of the motion sickness and having learned from this sort of thing games are now being adapted much much better to take full advantage of the immersion of VR and the best comparison I can give you is when smartphones first came out the touch phones and the games developers started developing games with on-screen

9:09joysticks and it was only until they really took advantage of the swipe function and the touch function that games really came into their own on the smartphone and that's what's happening with VR the first iteration were just variations of traditional video games on console but now they're actually truly developing games specifically for the immersive platform very well put I think

9:36that there's definitely some limitations right now in the content a lot of gimmicky content at first you know sort of plays on traditional games where people could just see the the 3d world that's surrounding them and I've played some games like that when when VR was first coming out five or six years ago and I experienced that you can only have fun for an hour or two before you sort

9:59of lose touch and there's not much past that so yes so for those that are in the capital markets I'm sure they're interested in Terra Virtua as a business you know what is the business plan to make money on the platform in the long run sure we obviously have a roadmap initially we're going to launch before we launch the full terabyte your platform we have a companion app that's

10:26currently in development that's going to allow you to select and play with all variations of the avatar that I mentioned before and we're going to be launching those as collectibles within the next couple of months we will launch Tara Virtua as a full platform globally in about summer 2019 that's when the the development will be complete as a pure platform you'll be

10:54able to enjoy all of the social experiences there will be a very large portfolio of games to play and then we'll be further on introducing live events like sports and concerts etc eSports as the platform evolves so we want to be very very cautious about the business it's very easy to take a shotgun approach but fortunately like myself the management team is comprised of quite a

11:20lot of gray hair and experience and we have some very very big experienced names from veterans of the videogames industry particularly at a sort of sea level of large corporations and so we're being very conservative with our business model with our growth we want to capture a market we're going for the low-hanging fruit initially which is videogames but the expansion plans are

11:48probably planned over a three-year period we have lots of exciting ideas that we intend to implement from even branching out to an e-commerce perspective over time but what we want to do is engage with the community first get a lot of users talking to each other on the social experiencing these games together so going out to play game watching a football game together that

12:16type of thing and then growing the platform listening to demand and ideas from the audience that's great to hear I've recently played a VR game where I was immersed with three of my teammates and we're all playing together is Tara Virtua planning on getting into that space right away or are you guys starting with the traditional you know single player VR games that's that's

12:43intrinsic in our initial plan I mentioned community we want to bring people together and obviously there'll be us there'll be social areas where you can interact with your friends and other people you can speak they'll be voice over IP so you'll be able to speak live but then you'll be able to say let's go off and play this multiplayer game together either competitively or

13:04collaboratively and maybe a paintball game it may be some sort of fun game and we're actually targeting those games that that enable multiple people to play at once because we want to encourage the social element of it sadly people are moving a little bit further apart these days and it's a nice way to try and bring people together again that's awesome yeah it really

13:30makes a difference when you can play with other people around you so I'm gonna ask you guys about your upcoming road map but you you laid out pretty clearly you said one of the major releases is coming out summer of 2019 as for like what's coming up in the near term are you guys doing a token sale for your cryptocurrency as well or what are the community efforts coming in the next

13:52couple months here sure we're being very active on on the social media channels and we seem to be getting quite a lot of favorable coverage from YouTube bloggers who've discovered our platform or are quite excited about it and but yes we've started our own ICO quite recently we're going through a private sale at the moment and that's taking us mostly around Asia that's why

14:19I've got big bags under my eyes and we're looking to close that by the end of the year we just want to get on and start making the business that's awesome yeah I I could see how a lot of youtubers and thought leaders would gravitate towards you know VR because it's just so exciting and there's so much potential that we really are in the incubation stage is still you know just

14:43wait till we're all immersed in there and we prefer it over real life I'm sure that will happen one day so if people are looking to get involved in terror virtua as a community member help out with the workings of the development of it what's the best way for people to get involved in the project well obviously the first stop is always the website that's www Terry virtua dot IO and from

15:11there you can read the white paper and we're very very keen to hear from anyone who's got great development ideas on a vr platform anyone who's developing a small game or whatever we are very very interested and very keen to encourage the growth of that particular sector so please take a look all contact details are on the website everything from Twitter to telegram and

15:39we'd love to hear from everyone awesome hey Gary Bracy CEO of Tara Virtua I really appreciate you coming on the show today I'm looking forward to following up with you guys in the beginning of 2019 after the token sale is closed the community has been growing to see how the project is flourishing and all the best to you until then and I look forward to speaking to you all the very

16:01best Ashton thanks very much indeed