Moxy is launching skill-based competitive gaming and eSports

0:01I'm Ashton Addison from Block West capital for investment pitch media and today on the crypto coin show we have Nolan Bushnell and Matt defao of moxie gentlemen welcome to the show and thank you for taking the time today I'm excited to dive into the world of Esports uh it's continuing to grow uh and the gaming industry is just something that is just since the last

0:24few years has really just been applying to all ages as well and um it's continued to grow even bigger than the blockchain and cryptocurrency Industry um and so it's something that I'm definitely paying attention to and I would love to dive into Moxie but before we start that just love to hear a little bit on your backgrounds personally how you've been involved in in gaming and

0:44how that led up to moxie I would love to start with you Nolan well I I kind of started at the early days of the video game business by kind of inventing it but you know I found it Atari you know created you know computer space and and uh and a whole bunch of games uh pong what have you and uh I was CEO I was I did a lot of the technology early on but then not so much

1:14and then I did a thing called Chuck E cheese and then I did uh automobile navigation and I uh Robotics and currently on a board with a self-driving car company so I'm I'm basically a techno nerd you know and uh and when uh when this uh Moxie opportunity came

1:42along and it was really mad who did the invention there I said this is the right tool at the right time at the right place man and so uh so I've been uh leading a lot of the strategy of what kind of games and and uh the structure but the objective is to have a platform that is ubiquitous and fair and uh

2:14allows competition with real value um real wagering and uh then to use a clear Contra a a smart contract to clear the transaction so I'm I'm all in uh amazing and Matt I would love to hear a little bit about you know as you said you know starting the idea and why you think now

2:41is the perfect time oh well look at uh the industries had Esports shoved down their throats for five or six years and there's no Outlet you have 540 million people is the latest stat people watching Esports and .001 of those people actually playing and being involved in Esports so what do you do with Moxie we turn that on its head now it's not for the pros it's for the Joes

3:06anyone can play for real rewards based on their skill and competition with other people so yeah it works anywhere in the world it works on any game it's not a web 3 thing at all we are on the games that you love to play and we just make them more compelling and instead of winning some skin or some dance or umbrella you can win actual cash prize rewards based on the Moxie token because

3:33with the Moxie token you can move that value wherever you want based on the reward that you get from your skill that's amazing that you're able to open it up to more of the viewers and I I remember when you know the Esports craze started moving into North America you know uh most people in gaming understand that you know the Southeast Asian uh gaming Force are are they're very

3:56hardcore you know uh Asia is very hardcore on their on their professional gaming and all of a sudden we started seeing Esports stadiums being built uh and people winning millions of dollars and lots of people watching but there's definitely that like how can I get involved and yeah maybe I'm not going to win a million dollars on you know the entry level league but I want to get

4:15started and I want to win something of value or you know be able to play in these skill based games um I feel like there's been a a gap there for a few years do you think this is the right time now that people are able to get involved through using Moxie very easily absolutely so yeah like Moxie is I like Nolan said right place right time right solution

4:40the industry's right for it we had a number of and quotes crypto projects and nft plays and all that kind of stuff really dirty the waters for the industry Publishers are very very very gun shy of anything that looks like or smells like crypto so with Moxie we use a blockchain technology for sure we use a token for sure because the reason we do that is

5:04it's the only way to do it at this point how do you do cross-border seamless how do you do fair and open and transparent how do you do loyalty currency how do you do instant settlement that's the only thing the only technology out there right now is distributed Ledger and blockchain so that's why we use it we're not doing the Pepe moon boy stuff that

5:25you're seeing on the internet where it's like oh I raise a whole bunch of money promise people a bunch of stuff and nothing happens with Moxie we did a successful fundraise in 2022 and then we just put our heads down and built a real product so we're actually launching July 10th and when that happens it's full on it's the fully baked Moxie ecosystem

5:45with games all the features ready to go live for the users so anyone who joins Moxie Club you can actually join now and set up their wallet for getting ready for launch on the 10th so it's very very exciting time we just finished four seasons of beta so we did that on testnet with test net tokens then we gave out actual usdc prizes to people not Moxie token prizes because it wasn't

6:09a live token until the 10th um and that went really well and I really enjoyed doing that because on testnet as you guys know doesn't really have a lot of throughput in terms of TPS and everything else and there's a lot of problems so for us to board 10 000 players on testnet that's like us testing with millions of players so we really stress tested the the whole

6:30solution effectively with a low user count to make sure that we are ready for prime time because I think when we start bringing on the games that we have in the pipeline with very major Publishers the user count is gonna break everything and we wanted to make it sure it didn't break everything so four seasons of beta wow I was uh I'm glad we did that let me tell you

6:53definitely wow that's great to hear and I want to learn more about the Moxie club and and how to get involved as well but I'm really curious on the games and the gameplay and I think Nolan would probably know this best because he's been involved in gaming you know before there wasn't any blockchain Technologies and you know decades before and from what I see you know Gamers they just

7:15want to play the game you know they don't really care about which technology is underlying the infrastructure that's sending the transactions as long as the gameplay is exciting and fun and uh it doesn't get boring after you play it for a few days right I I feel like picking the right games and ensuring that they have uh long-term fun and success is is important and I'm

7:39curious on uh Nolan you know if you have any insight into uh what are some of those secrets of partnering with the right games or having you know what's the secret ingredient to having a game that people are gonna love for a long time well I think we basically take the attitude that we are not going to be the Arbiter of what's good what we really want to be is

8:03the platform that allows whatever your device your your deviant tastes are that we satisfy it and and so you know some people want to do only first-person shooters others are more thoughtful and and would only like to play chess you know and and they're there are some games that have a high degree of variability

8:32to it uh Randomness and we're not doing those just because it becomes a a Johnson act violation and we we don't want to do that so so as long as the game is a Bonafide game of skill we're in and uh and and I think that uh one of my Jobs is

9:03I believe that there are some games that have been historically really fun that can be brought back now that we can wager on them for example I was playing a game and I'm not going to tell you what it was because you'll laugh at me but then about 10 or 15 years ago that I got really good at and I thought to myself

9:30we're going to put that up there and I'm going to make some serious mocks on that puppy because you know and and you know it's it's it's about having a secret ability a superpower and uh and I think a lot of people feel that way I wanted to point out a little bit about the Esports world right now if you really dig deep on it

10:00it's a Walled Garden that's basically controlled by the Publishers of those games and you know they're putting up prize money and and and and and doing that but it's still it's still a little bit of a it's it's not a ecumenical world and and I think that Moxie is going to give that leveling structure that will be good for

10:29the whole Business Degree man I mean I totally agree yeah it's the whole democratization like I was saying from Pros to Joe's it's everybody everybody can do it you don't have to be the number one team the number one player on a two million dollar prize pool you can play for your with your friends on Friday night for two bucks and have fun right yeah

10:52exactly I mean we uh the the Friday night poker night is is always fun with a bunch of buddies and now we can do it with all kinds of other games yeah because it's all skill based there's no no gambling here it's I'm saying that hey Ashton I'm gonna play you uh 1v1 and Call of Duty and let's see what happens right that's different that's not saying oh I'm gonna watch

11:19Ashton play Nolan and then I'm going to bet on one of you that's a bet that's good but when it's just you and me playing against each other hey let's see who is the real player here let's see who really wins who gets the trash talk and win or you suck buddy you're a scrub you're a noob right well that's a big win you know trash talking is actually the golden the Golden Fleece you know

11:42because you know if I can't trash talk my buddies what's what's world what's what's it worth you know come on I totally agree that's hilarious and and you know what I I feel from you know the start of Atari back in the day when the games were very simple and you know we didn't have these games that were terabytes in size with you know huge graphics and gameplay and

12:08the story that lasted days and days um everyone really understood the heart of skill based gaming and just having fun be able to play a game that they could play for 20 minutes and I feel like as we've gone through the gaming industry we've gone up this hill of you know enormous crazy RPG games and then sort of back down through the Advent of mobile gaming and getting people of all

12:32ages involved in these games and now we're sort of back to uh that Nostalgia of like hey this is just a simple game I could play uh quickly and now incorporating the the Moxie side of it you can actually you know sort of go back to that heart of what gaming was in the beginning but with a little bit of skill based fun where you can win stuff so I feel like we're really making a

12:55full circle but the next evolution I challenge you to a game of pong thank you so so no uh Matt can you explain uh exactly you know what is the Moxie Club you know how do you get in the club and

13:23then how can I start playing a casual based game against you for Rewards so Moxie Club is the center of it it captures your Moxie user so one of the things that some people don't like about what we've done but I think it's a very big positive once they understand why we did it is we make everybody kyc up front everybody else in this industry seems to

13:47okay maybe you can play for a while and you could win and then when you actually want to do this then you have to go through the step of kyc what we're trying to do is make sure that every single user from Dave gym we know who they are we know that they're really supposed to be there they're in a jurisdiction that's correct they're at the right age they're all the right

14:06things so that when we talk to our Publishers of very large games they're happy to bring Monson there's no risk for them to bring their their player base into Moxie because they know their player base is going to be treated well because for us since we are real prize pools this is this is real this is not uh oh hey I'm gonna bet you an umbrella skin this is I'm gonna play you and I'm

14:29gonna put real mocks into a prize pool and may the best person win right so we can't have a bunch of people polluting that and fake account ounce and everything else that's what Esports is all about you got to make sure that the person on the other end of that computer is a real person or we know who they are so if there is anything wrong that everybody knows that

14:49the community is protected because man if I get banned well how do I get back in I put my kyc information to this I'm not going to cheat I'm not going to risk this I love Moxie I love competing for real rewards so it puts that bonus on each person to just try to act right guys because we all know what internet trolls are like there'll be people who like look at on steam or epic you can go

15:11and make I'm the best gamer ever gmail.com account in two seconds and go in and wreak havoc on some death match or whatever and trash class people oh now make I'm the best gamer ever22 gmail.com because that account got banned and I'm back at it again right I'll VPN change my IP there's a whole bunch of ways you can do it but one you're a Moxie Club member at its Matt

15:35defao with his driver's license and a copy of his gas bill on there it's a bit different situation you don't act the same anymore The Human Condition is that there will be bad actors and we just want to minimize that to the extent that we can I mean when you're giving away things of value marks it just it's it kind of attracts Bad actors like you know flies after you

16:06know what so it's a do could we grow four times five times as fast if we were to have It Wide Open absolutely but we think that slow and steady wins the race build on Rock not sand yeah well if I was playing in a a game for money I would want to know that the

16:33person on the other side wasn't cheating or hacking or something right because that would be no fun exactly and because we're on chain every single game all the results who was playing it's all there so it's all transparent it's one of the beautiful things about the blockchain it's like having a full-time real-time audit all the time but just handled for you by the

16:56blockchain for free so anyone who has a dispute or anyone that says hey this is this doesn't look right guys why does this guy win 99.998 of the time it's like he might be the best player on Earth but even the best player can't win that bad win that much even with a bad team right so how do you mitigate that and we're doing that by making sure that every single

17:18person inside the ecosystem really is that person and they have some accountability on showing your face it's like in public the way people act behind the privacy of their computer screen and keyboard is a whole different ball game than when you see them in real life the biggest troll on Earth might be some really nice guy that's like oh hi nice to meet you in real life right but yeah

17:39the one things you'll say behind a keyboard and a monitor is like wow holy where'd this come from definitely yeah I think many people that play uh these online games especially the FPS ones uh they're on Xbox Live or something and everyone's trash talking until until their face is there and then they're like ah now I'm you know I'm exposed um yeah and so what Nolan was saying in

18:06the beginning about you know there's Gamers that there's Gamers that love first person shooters there's Gamers that love more strategy with chess you know there's a lot of people that just love playing these games quickly on their phone but seeing the games that we've seen traditionally in Esports whether it's fortnite League of Legends these crazy ones that they have more of

18:26a learning curve you know people don't want to get that deep involved um so if you're just a Casual Gamer that plays on your phone um are there a lot of options for those kinds of people that are just getting into it on Moxie absolutely we're going to have everything and everyone involved so whether you're the most casual sitting on the subway on your cell phone

18:48on like a 100 Android phone with a terrible processor all the way to a five thousand dollar forty ninety I9 rate right there's gonna be something for you Moxie works on iOS Moxie works on Android it works on consoles it works on PC it works on Mac um we've built this thing so that it's extensible enough but it can be built into any game we even have like high

19:12score based so it's a single player game it's not even a multiplayer game like Stripes not a multiplayer game it's on the Moxie ecosystem you're putting in a prize pool to see that I'm gonna get the old school arcade machine style high score for that day or that week or that button so we kind of support any type of gameplay whether it's you playing by

19:32yourself on Missile Command you try to get the very best score on them against your friend all the way up to League of Legends or WWE or whatever it is you can play those games and and get real rewards based on that it's amazing one thing the one thing we're going to do is is put the picture of the winner up we did that with a coin op game in which the high score got to

20:00put a snapshot of uh of the winner who got the high score it took less than a week and every every one of those games had a picture of somebody's bare ass on the picture and so I've learned that lesson oh my goodness I can't even imagine oh

20:31arcade culture back then yeah that would have been totally something that would have happened well we the the problem was that in some states having any kind of nudity like that would you could lose your liquor license oh so we had the two a quick patch on that puppy I shouldn't digress I people I love the digressing those are the stories are hilarious and only you know

20:58them though definitely um and now Matt you mentioned July 10th which is right around the corner here for the launch can you explain you know because Moxie Club from what I understand is live right now you can start playing what is the what is the next stage you know when the launch happens what happens to the current players and people that are just getting

21:20involved right on that day so right now Moxie Club is live for people to comment on board and do their kyc and set their wallet up and get ready for the launch in the 10th launch on the 10th is when we'll have our club sale so people have the ability to buy their first round of moxie tokens which then they can use to play the games on Moxie and then on the 15th we have our

21:42Battle of the influencers event which uh showcases in TV show format exactly what is Moxie how does it work it's going to have like Rampage Jackson and a bunch of influencers on there that show people playing not not Esports guys not like you know some professional Esports team just like normal people and streamers who like games but they're by no means

22:06professions just to show you what the difference is when you actually have a real prize pool on the line and how you will consider it versus what you'll do if it's just that it doesn't matter it's like playing you know if you're out playing golf with your buddies when there's 20 on the line it's a totally different game than no money at all right it's a totally different thing so

22:26everybody gets in it brings back that sweaty Palms feeling of being in the arcade Aid that was the thing about the arcade you put your quarter up on this side of the machine and now you're like guys we're beating everybody I hope I beat him and now you're up you put your quarter in it's a totally different thing than just pressing OK on next match next match next match right yeah

22:47yeah even if there's a little bit on the line uh it makes a difference in that competitive nature for sure totally it's just a human instinct way more fun it's human inside so it brings that back but yeah 10th is uh tge and the club sale so you'll be able to actually get on be able to grab Moxie token for yourself to get ready and then the 15th it's wide open TV show

23:11style format you'll be able to watch that on Twitch and YouTube live and things like that so be really interesting amazing and so I'm sure that there's there's a game for everybody you know if you're casual if you're hardcore if you're just skeptical uh I I'm sure there's something and and from what I understand we're very early in having you know all skill based games being

23:32able to compete like this so I'm guessing this is just the beginning of the road for you guys oh yeah this is going to be talking to AAA game studios and and the newest games coming out um and and this will be something that is uh for the long term we've been doing that for over a year now talking to large Publishers in large games and obviously no one's going to be like hey

23:53sure I'm going to be the first ever to do it finally Count Me In let's do it they want to see this work they want to see that it's real so that's what the 15th does for a special influencer shows them like hey this is a real fun thing that people will enjoy we've already got some people on the season one through four on the beta quit streaming and showing and

24:14that that got pretty good engagement so this that's going to be coming more and more and more because we've got game modes now where we can have it where the the streamer puts in the prize pool it allows their member base to play so it's not even like the members have to commit to the prize pool but they can win so it's it's a whole different level on the

24:34streaming side too because now it's really engaging for these streamers to be like hey who wants to play me I'm gonna put a four thousand dollars and it's gonna be so fun and we're gonna do it over three days let's see who wins and if you beat me I'm gonna give out to the top five players it's a totally different ball game than I might send you a sweatshirt right yeah no that's

24:56taking it to the next level because I know a lot of streamers that people are just watching them on on Twitch or whatever and to be able to actually play with the people that that are watching the stream and it's like hey get in the next game with me um that sounds 1 000 times more fun than just watching the guy play should we I actually think that it will make sense

25:22for advertisers to put up a price pool and uh and in the game that they have a message for whatever they're doing and so I think that that's actually okay uh you know the you know use our platform use us and abuses uh as long as you know it's part of the ecosystem

25:50yep and because everybody is like the right age and they verified who they are and stuff we don't have any of the concerns that you'd have if you were just randomly giving out real rewards to random people on the internet right it's just going to a verified Moxie Club member that should be there and is legally entitled to be there and Regulatory compliant to be there so it's

26:11a whole different ball game all the way around for the industry it's a good thing for gamers it's a good thing for the Publishers and developers it's a good thing for the people who also monetize the industry like streamers and yeah like no one was saying you can have real advertisers that can say at the end like oh can I see the demographics and the people who played oh here they are

26:31you you saw them because they're they're playing your game on your prize pool or playing someone else's game based on the price pool you put together like it's crazy look at Super Bowl versus League of Legends LCS League of Legends LCS is destroying viewership numbers of things like Legacy Media Super Bowl people spend hundreds of millions of dollars

26:53marketing that thing and League of Legends LCS is like hey you want to watch some guys play a game 5v5 and they're just destroying the numbers they fill stadiums it's insane it is insane and uh it's it's great because it brings people together and um and it's fun to watch um so Matt if people want to sign up right now to get ready for the launch on

27:20July 10th uh where do they go and what are the communities that they can go to speak to other Gamers that are also signing up club.moxy dot IO and sign up and get ready and get you all all set up you can go on our telegram Channel you can go on our Discord channel it's all uh on the website moxie.io all of the relevant links are there for you it's super easy

27:44um we're by Gamers for gamers so we try to make this as psychologically the same as what you're used to seeing it's not like big corpo getting in there and being like hello sir please sign up today we're trying to make it for the game tonight I've been gaming a long time Nolan invented the industry so well you know the we don't we there's kind of a wink wink

28:08nudge nudge here too the people that sign up early are going to find that it was rewarding for them enough said if you know you know I like kyk that's our big theme on the telegram channel so yeah you are right that was a good highway kyk right there amazing gentlemen thank you so much for the insights Nolan uh I appreciate these stories and digressing into the past

28:35video games you know people get nostalgic on video games but you're really taking it back to the beginning which is amazing and it's it's amazing to see you continuing to to support Esports and growing competitive games and skill based gaming to get everybody involved and to just have fun um so I really appreciate both of the both of you for taking the time I will

28:56leave the moxie.io and the club Moxie links and the Social Links in the description box below as well all the best on the launch of moxie and the continuing growth of the gaming industry and Competitive Gaming and let's definitely follow up in the near future I always like to leave any any podcast with a joke and so then you hear the one about the past

29:23present and future walk into a bar no it was tense [Laughter] that's a good dad joke all that I like I'm sorry that's a good one amazing thank you guys be good thanks all the best thank you