Zima Red ep 125: Kevin Beauregard - Atmos: Bringing Sports Into The Metaverse
Primer: Esports involve a cognitive leap for people. You need to understand the rules of the game before you understand what you are watching. How can sports be understood in the context of the Metaverse? Kevin Beauregard introduces Atmos, a world where Metaverse-native sports can be experienced. Find out more in this Zima Red podcast episode.
Background
Got into crypto in 2013
Background in software engineering and entrepreneurship
Hockey player
GoCoin
A multi-coin payment processor
Was the CTO of GoCoin
Project started in Summer 2013
The Collapse Of Mt Gox
Was at a crypto festival when Mt Gox collapsed
It turned bearish overnight
“And overnight, all the trust is gone. What little trust there was anyways was gone.”
- Kevin Beauregard
AUX Labs
After GoCoin, he experienced burnout
He jumped around a number of different startups before returning to build AUX Labs
AUX Labs was set out to build DeFi infrastructure
At that time, it was ICO mania
They were building auction tech/price discovery tools for ICOs
Realized it was a mistake. People did not want price discovery; they wanted tokens to moon
Took their auction tech to build an NFT marketplace
They were too early and there were not enough NFT projects to make it a viable business
Bloq
Was one of the lead engineers for Vesper Finance
Vesper Finance is a DeFi yield aggregator
Building Atmos
Enamoured with the idea of marrying sports and blockchain together
Back in 2018/2019, he wanted to build a fantasy basketball game using NFTs
Wanting to be a contrarian, he wrote an essay about why he should not be building it
Reached the conclusion that the Metaverse should have Metaverse-native sports
The challenge to mainstream adoption of esports is that they are a cognitive leap for people. People need to understand the rules for each game
Atmos is built for Metaverse-native sports
What Games Are They Designing First?
The world that they designed is Exo suit-based
Their first game is a racing game that takes place using an Exo suit in 3 dimensions
It’s entirely skill-based and competitive
Set about 500 years in the future, Atmos is the name of the planet we’re on
This mining colony has started to use these suits to race competitively in space
What Can You Do In The Atmos Universe?
It is an open world that can be explored
Their focus is to deliver competitive titles within this open world ecosystem, and then layer in additional interactivity and utility over time
They currently have 3 core game loops:
Mining
Fabricating — a crafting system
Racing
Resources from mining (fungible tokens) are used to craft NFTs
Exo Suit
Exo suits are wearable vehicles
The suit has at least 31 unique swappable parts
These parts will have a performance impact. However, it is not pay-to-win
“You're not going to catch Lewis Hamilton driving a Honda Civic, right? And if he was driving a Honda Civic, he’d still probably be faster than most of us driving any other car that you put us in.”
- Kevin Beauregard
Will be allowing people to use their other NFTs as decals on their suits
Mining And Fabricating
Mining
Will be like DeFi at the beginning
It’s yield farming with a new set of rules
Have to decide what resources you are farming for (e.g. carbon, gold, aluminium, etc.)
Have 20-30 fungible resources
Players would not know what resources a given plot of land has
Fabricating
Resources can be combined to form composites that end up on your suit
Fabrication can be done by yourself or someone else with a higher skill level
Will have a marketplace facilitating the fabrication process
Prizes For Winning Races
Depends on the race and the tier
Prizes will either be in their native token or resource tokens
Betting On Races
Not possible at the moment
World Building
Their approach to building the world/ecosystem is iterative
Producing an 8-issue comic series that will be released over the summer
Issues will be released every 2 months
Will have emergent storytelling — As gameplay is live, what users do in the game world will impact the storyline in the comics
Will The Core Game Logic Be On-Chain?
Initial drops will be done on Ethereum
Gameplay will not be on Ethereum
Evaluating which chain gameplay will be on
Grand Vision For Atmos
Stolen a good portion of eyeballs from the traditional sports markets
Why Are More People Going To Be Attracted To Metaverse-Native Sports?
Hockey was unwatchable on TV until HD TVs were introduced
Similarly, NFTs have created an opportunity for people to have ownership of digital assets
The user base is so large. Metaverse-native sports will help people understand what is it about and would capture their interest
Similarly, for Formula One, having the ability to switch to the helmet/cockpit cameras made it more immersive for fans
Responding To People Who Are Bearish On Web3 Gaming
Important for builders to recognize real problems and not handwave them away
For blockchain games with an economic loop, there's no way that devs could prevent people who would do nothing but extract value from it
Players have the choice to participate in any game loop that they want (e.g. mining and fabricating, but not racing, etc.)
When Will Web3 Gaming Go Mainstream?
Traditional gamer and Web3 gamers have different thought processes
Traditional gamers have been promised the world by game companies and have been let down repeatedly. Hence, they hate promises
Web3 and crypto participants love promises
Both perspectives are wrong to some extent
“Gamers have been promised the world by game companies time and time again, and are frequently let down. And so gamers tend to hate promises, right? Conversely, Web3 and crypto participants love promises. Both of these things are probably wrong to some extent.”
- Kevin Beauregard
Web3 projects have to deliver compelling gameplay to bridge that chasm
Blockchain games are built iteratively, which is uncomfortable for traditional gamers that are used to concrete launches
Single Favourite NFT
His Murakami Drip Clone
Most Controversial Thought
The future is multi-chain
If He Could Improve One Thing In The Space
Get rid of the scammers and spammers in the space
NFT Ecosystem In 3 Years
An uptick in adoption
A lot of projects either fade out or succeed in a big way
People creating micro-communities
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