S2E16: Paul Bettner (Wildcard Alliance) - Onboarding the First Billion Gamers to Web3
Majority of gamers have not tried blockchain-based games with non-fungible tokens and many of them already have a strong disdain for them. But we remain optimistic that the next iteration of these experiences will move on from the pay-to-win mechanics inherent in play-to-earn games and shift towards more of a model where the web3 components are there, are accessible and are used in a unique way to create game functions or use-cases that traditional technologies and protocols can’t.
We had a fantastic conversation with Paul Bettner, the CEO of Playful Studios who is developing an upcoming web3 game called Wildcard that has an extremely ambitious vision (which explains why and how they raised $46M in funding for the project). Prior to Playful, Paul was a Vice President and General Manager at Zynga where he created a “tiny little game” called Words With Friends. Before Zynga, he spent 11 years at Ensemble Studios both before and after it was acquired by Microsoft, where he worked on a host of well-known RTS games.
Our conversation was wide-ranging and covered a host of topics. We discuss the ambitious vision for Wildcard, how the game natively takes advantage of web3 protocols to create something new and why user-generated content proto-metaverse gaming platforms like Roblox are such a powerful tool.
Listen to the episode on: Spotify / Apple / Anchor and make sure to rate, review and subscribe on your favorite platforms.
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