Web3 Gaming, AI & The Rise of Telegram

[upbeat music] Welcome to another show of 51 Insights, today with Anton Umnov.

Anton, welcome to the show. Hey, Mar. Good to be here. Thank you for the invite. Anton, you're the founder and CEO of Helika. Helika is a gaming analytics platform. Can you explain to us a little bit more?

What is Helika? What do you do? Yeah, yeah, totally. So, um, Helika, as you said, we're in the gaming analytics space.

Um, so similar to traditional gaming industry, many of the game studios need a lot of data to figure out who the users are, who the players are, how can we balance economy to drive the right people, to drive user monetization, and Web3 is a bit different because we're dealing with different data sets, sometimes different users as well.

So we're supporting many game studios who are building in a space. Yeah. And I'm, I'm super excited to have you here today because, as you know, Web3 gaming has been a topic since many years.

I remember about two or three years ago, a g- Web3 gaming experienced a huge hype. I remember titles like Illuvium, uh, a- and others who started building on this. They a- all launched tokens.

Those tokens exploded in value. Most of those teams have been building now for a couple of years. Where do we stand right now in Web3 gaming?

Yeah, honestly, for all of us, uh, and you witnessed this as well, uh, Web3 gaming and blockchain in general was a bit of a journey over the last couple of years.

Myself, I have been in blockchain space for the last years, and definitely we're seeing a l- a big changes as it comes to gaming on DeFi in the last couple of years. So, so what I would say is, um, the, the, there is...

there was a lot of hype couple years back in the previous, uh, in the previous, uh, bull market around Web3 gaming, and I think what happened is, is that Web3 gaming, uh, the hype around it really out- outpaced the product delivery.

So that was kind of the core of the issues because many teams that we saw, they have been prioritizing token launches versus actually building games that are fun, that people can enjoy.

And, and I think that happened, the peak of that was in the previous cycle, and since then, uh, we're seeing a lot of different changes where people start to remember that game's actually a B2C product. It has to be fun.

It's not necessarily only about tokens and being able to earn the games.

And on the Helika front, it's interesting for us 'cause most of the teams we're working with that are pre-game release, so usually it's about one or two years out.

So actually, um, uh, lots of, uh, lots of strong games are coming in the pipe later in the summer across various channels, including mini apps, which is one of the channels that we're very bullish on as well.

So, so I think, I think, uh, you'll see, um, some more of the product releases. We've been exciting to see some games like Off the Grid on the market, was released in Europe and US, uh, in the last couple of months.

I think that's pretty interesting. And many of our customers we're wo- work with today, I think, uh, something exci- exciting is coming up.

So I really believe that in, in this cycle, we'll see more fun play and, um, it will be more about the players versus only tokenomics. I remember a couple of months back, I had Carlos from Bitkraft here on the show.

Bitkraft is one of the biggest gaming VCs. I asked him the same question, "Where is Web3 gaming and why has it taken longer than, than many expected?"

And I remember his answer was, "Yeah, a lot of those bigger games or AA titles need just longer development times than many people think." Exactly. What do you think about that? Yeah, no, 100%, right?

Like, so I- I'm not gonna be commenting on the development cycles, but definitely for the bigger ones, we're talking about more than a year at minimum, to say the least.

That's why I think many of the teams, while building bigger titles, I think those experimenting with some of the social media, social messaging platforms to release mini apps, to release experiences that could introduce the players potentially to the bigger gameplay that is coming.

Um, and, and, and so for the bigger titles, that, that, that's true, but I think Talk and, um, and Telegram able to accelerate the product development cycle and also on generative AI front and various ML tools, agents that are coming live now, I'm sure we'll be chatting about it.

It really helps you to fast-track the development from the creative side, but also being able to do A/B testing of the games way sooner, way earlier, and I think we'll see the shrink in development cycles coming up.

And it's not only Web3 specific, it's across the whole, uh, the whole gaming pool and across all the apps, quite frankly, as it relates to music, any consumer product. But totally agree with Carlos, um, of course. Yeah.

That... Mm-hmm. That's, that's super interesting and, and we- we're gonna dive deeper into that later. But before we do that, though, a, a question more generally. I mentioned Web3 games.

Do you think that's the right term to describe those games or is it just a game with Web3 technology? What makes a game Web3? Yeah. No, de- depending how you look at it.

So I'm definitely in a camp that we need to build games. Uh, right? When you watch, when you watch Netflix, you don't really worry what's running on the back end. Is it AWS or, or GCP?

You, you, you wanna make sure movie is, movie is exciting. But I think the term could c- could come from couple different things.

First of all, I think the, today at least, the audiences, um, the people who playing Web3, the players, they're slightly different than traditional, uh, uh, players as well. They often looking for incentives.

They are community-driven. They are early adopters. And, and to your point, I don't think there have been a lot of, uh, titles, there are a couple, that have been able to break the mainstream success.

So I think, I think right now the, uh, people who play Web3 games and Web2, it's different, different people, and that's what we will be dis- discussing today, how to break, uh, in the mainstream.

But generally speaking, of course, I think, um, uh, developers should be thinking about how to build a fun, engaging gameplay so that, Mark, you and I can play the Candy Crush, uh, uh, on the bus stop for hours, right?

Versus worrying about what kind of, uh, what kind of chain backend technology you should be using because people don't really care at the end of the day. It's about fun, uh, experience.

But I think the lines between Web3 and traditional gaming is blurring.

One of the elements that might slow down on that front, uh, is, is the fact that we're seeing a lot of games start to integrate various fintech products, various wallets and Defis and things like that.

So, so I think in terms of earning potential, in terms of getting additional income, the game economy is becoming more and more sophisticated. Right?

So you can get your tokens, you can restake it, you can ear- earn interest and things like that.

So ideally, combining the fun gameplay with ability to get compensation, if you will, for your time, it would be very interesting.

Imagine you, um, imagine you using Instagram, and every time, uh, you're watching a reel, you're getting, you're getting compensated for your time in parallel to watching fun reels.

I think that combination of, of that should be interesting. Let's talk a little bit about Helika. What, what inspired you to, to launch Helika on... What's the problem that you solve in the market?

Yeah, a couple different things.

So, so myself, I'm product data analytics guy, so I was always in the space for a long time, and I founded a couple previous companies, and the thesis was always, let's enter nascent industries early on because the teams, any product teams who are building, building an application are relying on data to understand what people are looking for, what customers are looking for.

So the data play, data analytics play i- is always important, whether it's early days of e-com, fintech, uh, and in this case, it's Web3. But what's interesting about the games in particular,

y- you know, I used to work in the finance space. There's only two industries that use data on a real-time basis at scale. One of them would be hedge funds.

You have to trade, you have to figure out where the market is at. And surprisingly, maybe not for your audience, but for many people, games are very data-driven products and, and decisions.

Yes, it's all about fun, but people sometimes don't realize that a l- a lot of mathematics on the back end are driving various decisions.

If, Mark, you're getting 10 points or 10 badges or gems, and I get t- I get seven, there is potentially a reason for that because you might be the right, more engaged, uh, you know, user player in the game, right?

So mathematics and data analytics is very important, and the gap that Helika, Helika is solving is specifically related to Web3, which is we're dealing with multiple data sources, what's happening on the blockchain, what's happening on social media, and what about just, uh, in-game play.

So you have to be able to understand player behavior in, in real time, combining all of those data sets together to be able to make the right call, what kind of product or service or, or tokens, loyalty rewards I should be offering to you.

So it's a very complex data problem on the back end. The, uh, games are run globally 24/7, so that's why we entered early to work with, uh, many teams in the space. That's super interesting.

Just a couple of days ago, I had the founder of Gig on- Yeah... our podcast.

Gig is also a data analytics company focused on gaming, but they don't focus on blockchain games, they focus on platforms like Roblox or Fortnite or Minecraft.

And the difference is, with blockchain games, you have a lot more data from on-chain interactions and transactions. What is some of the, of that data that you look at? Yeah, no, it's...

No, no, it's interesting because, um, um, for us, many of the teams that we're working with, it's traditional big players, uh, game studios that moved in, in the space.

Some of them like this, and they're definitely experts in, in understanding, we'll call it Web2 user behavior, like all the standard metrics, but where they usually a little bit more complex when you touch into Web3 component.

So for example, you can run player segmentation based on your normal metrics, uh, you know, traditional game metrics, but on-chain segmentation could be very different.

It's how much, how much, uh, value you hold in your wallets. Are you whale or not? Uh, and so ability to process this kind of Web3 component is interesting.

And for us to be able to do that, to answer your question, we're focusing on three main da- da- uh, data sources.

On-chain analytics, there's a lot of different chains, L1, L2, L3, L4s, and many games using multi-chain approach. So you have to stitch all of those data sets together before you can even approach analytics.

We're tracking all the regular in-game metrics. How long do you play, playtime, DAO, MAU, et cetera, to be able to understand how engaged or, or how easy is it for you to retain the players.

And for us, also, social media is playing the big role.

Uh, for Web3 games, community-driven approach and social media is big, and so being able to understand through analytics the sentiment analysis about the game, whether it's released or not, is also very important.

Sentiment usually acts as a leading indicator for, for success.

Uh, and again, it's, it's a model, and we're combining the sentiment analysis from com- uh, from, uh, consumers from social media apps, combined with what's going on in the game and the game economy, helping the teams to balance it to improve monetization and retention.

And, and when you started uncovering some of those blockchain-based metrics, what were some surprising findings that you uncovered compared to traditional Web2 metrics that you would look at in a game?

Yeah, no, it's interesting. So I think, I think on-chain behavior tends to be somewhat different from, uh, from traditional metrics as well.

Like I mentioned before, many of the existing players outside of the gameplay, it's also important for them to figure out how much earning potential, if you will.

The incentives play a very big role, and we can talk about it in, in, in, in the back half of the call, but it should be, I think, more balanced.

Uh, and so the incentive mechanism that you see in a game, in a normal game, is very different from Web3. In fact, uh, I think there's, there are limited incentives in traditional games. You just...

You, you know, plus/minus usually, usually, usually play, uh, for fun. But the analytics that we provide, we have about, uh, 40, 30, 40 different customers that we work with today, uh, on the Helika side.

The analytics usually are very different because when you think about Parallel, which is one of the biggest games, trading card game, the building colony is very different from a third-party shooter or proof of play.

Like it's... All of the game, game types are different, that's why analytics are different as well. Just out of curiosity, Anton, do you play any Web3 games? I do, actually. I do. I, well- Hmm...

my, myself, to give you the context, I used to be, I used to be semi-pro, I have to be careful- Wow... because in Co- in Counter-Strike back in the days.

So I'm coming from kind of traditional, uh, uh, CS, RPG type of background in, in early 2000s. Um, one of my favorite games, quite frankly, is, uh, Pirate Nation from, uh, from Proof of Play.

I think it's very interesting because they are pioneers in, uh, integrating not only game mechanics, but also DeFi mechanics into, into the gameplay, and it's fully on-chain game, so it's very...

It, it, it's, this is the, um, pioneer in fully on-chain games as is, right? Because many of the teams are using a kind of hybrid approach.

Sometimes they would launch a game, and then later on when you get airdrop or, uh, some kind of purchases, you can do it on a chain. So it's usually 2.5, as we call it.

But, uh, Pirate Nation is pretty cool, very engaging, would recommend everyone to test it out.

Why do you think some of those bigger game studios and titles like, I remember I, I used to play Call of Duty, for example, and I feel like in the last years franchises like Call of Duty started introducing a lot of in-game perks and, and collectibles and stuff like that.

Why haven't they embraced on-chain assets more so far? Yeah. Well, I, I think Web3 relative to the gaming is still small, right?

We're talking about, I don't know percentages, but let's call it o- uh, 5% of, of, of the market. So for them it's just small, and especially for Call of Duty, uh, it's a, it's a massive fra- fr- franchise, right?

So if you... What we see from bigger studios is when they're moving to the Web3 space, and we work with two, um, uh, big Web2 companies, so Ubisoft and, uh, and Nexon.

So usually sometimes they are experimenting with smaller titles, if you will. They still could be big, but they will...

L- in the case of Call of Duty, they might not be putting it on a, on a chain right away 'cause, 'cause it's a very complex process, right? It...

That's why Helika exists, 'cause we're trying to learn together how to understand the different user behavior in Web3.

So if you have a massive IP, maybe it's not the right way to launch it first because it's a risk to your brand equity, especially because on the Web...

The main difference between traditional gaming is that community tends to be involved early.

So usually in traditional gaming side, you build a game couple years, you have a major release at Gamescom or one of the conferences, uh, and, and here is the game. In Web3 it's different.

You're actually co-creating it with your con- with your community. You might release alpha, beta, you might do initial airdrops. You collect the feedback from community, what's working, what's not.

So the process or the way you're building the games is very different there. So that's why I, I think that's also, you know, traditional gaming trying to adjust there. Mm-hmm.

But I think, uh, as it relates to AI and many of the generative tool that we're seeing on the market now, uh, where the question of authenticity comes into play as well, I think many of the even traditional Web2 brands, I'm talking about retail, CPG, et cetera.

Think about apparel.

They almost have to, uh, use the blo- the blockchain, the ledger to drive the authenticity to make sure it's not somebody who, uh, you know, copied and pasted it through ChatGPT 7.0, you know, the same product.

So it also becomes the, the IP, uh, validation related exercise, and I think that's why it will accelerate in the next couple years. And I would love to dive a bit deeper into that.

You mentioned it at the beginning of the call, the impact of AI on gaming and also development cycles. You just mentioned, uh, authenticity. How do you see this unfolding in the next years? Yeah.

Like, honestly, what, what's interesting, there's only c- there's only a couple industries that usually embrace tech innovation from across any, a- any, um, tech periods. One of them is gaming.

So games, other ones I cannot probably name publicly on this call, but, uh, games usually embrace a lot of tech innovation. And so in this case, it's, it's not an exception.

The reason why, um, uh, like Helika for example, we've been using custom LLMs 'cause we're dealing with l- a lot of data for a long time.

You just have to do it if you able, if you want to provide real-time player analytics.

And the latest trend, which is AI agents, which is how do you take those custom LLM models and make it as NPC, make it, uh, live essentially.

It's, it's a new thing, um, um, that came to the mainstream in the last, in the last couple month. And so what we're seeing is, and we just had a board meeting, uh, last week actually.

What we're seeing is that AI agent tech, uh, as, as technology is really accelerating, uh, across, across many thing. We s- across many things in the game.

We're seeing that the games are very actively moving towards autonomous game economies or semi-autonomous game economies.

Um, so last year I think a lot of focus have been how can we create the graphics, the kind of UX using GenAI, and you know, that's, that's already happening. But what about the gameplay, right?

So, so couple examples, couple of the use cases that we just saw this week from, uh, from couple of our customers is, uh, skill-based, uh, type of, um, uh, AI agents.

So for example, if you play with bots, and bots are essentially AI agents, depending on your skill level, depending on your preferences, let's say you might be a sniper in Counter-Strike, you might be a knife holder.

The, your opponents that are AI agents adjust to your preferences, adjust to your, uh, skill as well, and in this way they can drive more engagement, more engagement in the game.

I was, uh, I made a post on this a couple days ago. I was chatting with somebody about dating apps. Uh, I think all of us can relate to that at some point of our lives.

So how would Tinder 2.0 look like with, uh, AI agents in it?

And, and so what's interesting there is imagine Tinder where you have a copy of yourself, your, your basically AI agent that knows how you talk, your humor and things like that, but everyone else on this marketplace have the same AI agent as well.

So instead of you chatting with somebody online, your agent clones talk to each other. They talk, "Hey," should they meet or not, and only three days later you see the dating kind of like invite in your calendar.

You know what I mean? Mm. Somebody might say, somebody might say that, um, dating become boring robotics. I mean, another way to look at it, you're actually freeing up time for the meaningful connections, right? Yeah.

So there's a lot of things happening, people experimenting, so kind of hard to say, but there's no question about it that, uh, AI agents as technology is getting implemented across the board.

That's so interesting, and you, you said it right.

I mean, those developments are accelerating massively, and I agree with you that we will probably have AI agents doing stuff for us in the next one or two years, whether it's online dating or whe- whether it's, uh, talking to someone, doing tasks on the internet, filtering information.

As those AI agents will be deployed, we'll have just like an overflow of any- everything. We need those agents to cope with that. Yeah, exactly.

Um- And the way, and the way we're thinking about it, Helika, on the Helika side, 'cause we're a data analytics company, how do we help our customers that are actively exploring and, and deploying AI agents?

So we're not building our, our own, but the way we think about it, I think AI agents could become smarter, more adaptable, more restrained in some cases.

And we, because being a data company, we're building several AI agents on the back end that can help to analyze and feed data to those agents.

And as they get the feedback from the market, they can learn and adapt faster. Mm-hmm.

So we view ourselves still as data analytics company servicing, if you will, some of those AI agents, and that would be interesting as well to understand which ones and how they're behaving. Yeah.

So you, you mentioned gameplay a- and I actually remember, I think about two weeks ago, there was the first AI agent launch on Roblox with the Eliza OS framework. Yeah.

That is one of the, the bigger frameworks for on-chain agents. And then you also mentioned the acceleration of development times thanks to AI. Can you explore that a little bit? Yeah, yeah. Of course.

Uh, so even using, using my personal experience, um, on the Helica front, we're on one of the biggest acceleration, accelerators, uh, and, and venture studio in, in a Web3 gaming.

Um, and, and so what was even making it faster for us is, uh, being able to use various publishing tools that we have built and AB test way quicker.

So it used to be that you, as a game developer, deploy specific feature, you do literally AB test, compare pre and post to understand, did this feature relative to my, my base increase engagement, retention, et cetera?

Uh, right now we can do it... We're not there yet at all, but right now we can do it way more programmatically.

So instead of running literally tests, take 100 people, see, see how they react versus the base, right now you can get the feedback loop way quicker. Mm-hmm.

Um, and also because we aggregating multiple data sets across various games in Web3, which is by the way, not fully possible in Web2, 'cause every community, every game is isolated.

Uh, we see a lot of benchmarks, and we know where you wanna be at in your certain, uh, level of development and game type, um, before you move on to the next stage, right?

So you, you, you're able to avoid some of the mistakes. On acceleration front, um, we, we work with about 10 teams per cohort.

Whenever people apply, we never know who will be the next CS, who ne- who will be the next Halo, but we definitely know who might not gonna get there at all, right? So, so that's the way we think about it. Mm-hmm.

Do you think we will not only see an acceleration on the development front, but also an acceleration in the, the time, time spent in games? Well, I don't, I don't know.

When I played Civilization, I almost failed, uh, I think like second or third year of university 'cause it was like 10 hours nonstop, you know, Civilization. Yeah.

Uh, so I, so I think it depends depend- depending on the game type, but there's no question about it, some of the similar routine tasks that we're doing in a day, in a day-to-day life, if you have your clone that can help you to farm specific, uh, resource of the economy, um, uh, automatically, uh, so I think you're just reallocating your time and w- within the game what are you focusing on.

Yeah.

But I think because of the social media apps, because of, uh, we can chat about Telegram as well, because of the, uh, messaging apps, I think, and, and Twitch type of, type of products, I think the line between what does it mean to play the game in front of your computer on desktop versus today it's, it's blurring, right?

Because you have the same experiences of your game across all of the consumer touchpoints that we see every day.

Yeah, and that, that's a perfect segue to Telegram because that's also a, a big, big topic in, in gaming, and I know you, you just launched or you're about to launch a Telegram game accelerator.

What makes Telegram interesting as a gaming platform? Yeah. It's interesting.

So, so Telegram, um, so, so first of all, what we need to consider is like Telegram, the, as an app, social media app, has been, has been there, I don't know how many years, but you know, forever, let's call it.

And why, why is it interesting? And it's not only about Telegram, it's LINE Messenger, it's TikTok, any, any kind of social media apps.

What's interesting there is that your development time really, to your previous question, becomes shorter because you can drop a product, it's the HTML5, you don't need to build it for that long time as tr- in traditional gaming, and you can get a feedback from people pretty quickly.

Uh, but the biggest thing what I think it's important is, is that virality and, and kind of sharing mechanics that people usually orchestrate themselves in traditional gamings, it's already em- already embedded in a, in a, in a publishing platform, if you will, right?

So ability to send stickers, re-share, if the product is right, is embedded so you don't need to worry about it, so you, you worry only about the gameplay.

And also Telegram is interesting because it's the, it's the biggest, right? So it's the biggest as it relates to, um, uh, to, to the social media apps that are actually focusing on games and, and the mini apps.

It's about, I don't know the numbers, but it's about one billion active players, active users, sorry.

And if not, even if not all of them are playing the games, statistically speaking, out of a billion there'll be a material number of people who are, or you know, would be interested in it as well.

Uh, and, and, and- Mm-hmm... and also, like you probably followed some of those examples, Notcoin, uh, Catizen, some of the other teams that have been early adopters of the, of the games on, um, Telegram.

And what we see on our end on acceleration front is that the next set of games and studios that are coming live that we're gonna bring to market, it's mid-core plus games, so it's more sophisticated gameplay.

It's not just tappers. You can actually move around, you can do quests, you can do RPG type of games.

But I think the role that the early adopters who will be releasing other products as well played, it's very important because somebody might say that all of those tapper games are boring.

You just like tap, tap, tap, you get the coins. But I think they played also the very important role, uh, by really driving Web2, Web2 adoption to Web3, right?

So when you never, when you don't know what blockchain is or kind of crypto wallets, this pro- those products played specific role where you tap it for a while, and then guess what?

You have a balance, and to cash out the balance you need to connect a wallet, and you're like, "Oh, wallets exist." You know what I mean?

So it was almost like edtech type of play in a product journey, and right now we see that the, the audience on Telegram and other messengers are ready for mid-core plus games. Yeah. Yeah.

We a- we actually did a big, big, deep, deep dive on Telegram games, and one of the things we highlighted was also the opportunity for brands to come in and tap into a massive user base and potentially gather data.

And I know this, this is a bit of a, an unclear point with Telegram games. What's your take there? How much data can you actually get from Telegram gamers? Yeah. So, so it's very complex.

Like the data business is complex as is in, in Web3, Telegram, Telegram as well.

When you think about it, so Telegram is combination, two different companies, but it's combination of the messenger- And there's a TON blockchain that is exclusive now on Telegram as well.

So you have to process both on-chain game as well as data from the, from the, uh, messenger itself. So it's, it's very, it's very separate. By definition, you don't really have a lot of information.

Uh, but for us on the Helika side, it was interesting because we've been, um, we're one of the earliest and the biggest companies in the Web3 analytics space.

So we have, we have been building a big collection of the benchmarks and data sources, uh, for a long time. Uh, so, so we've been aggregating those data sets together.

But right now, even on Telegram, there's no, there's no specific benchmarks.

Like, what does it mean for an app to be super successful, not necessarily in terms of revenue, but in terms of, you know, engagement, retention, all the standard metrics? I think we're still trying to learn.

Uh, I mean, mid-core plus games are not really available at scale yet, so we don't really know.

So I would treat it almost like, uh, as a B testing experience for some of your, some of your listeners who are coming into Telegram, there's no risk. Uh, it's fairly easy to launch.

Um, uh, you can publish it, you can drive traffic, you can do A/B testing, so you don't need to build it for two years and see what happens.

Uh, so, so I think, I think almost treat it as, um, your innovation box that could become very, very big. And we've seen successes with Catizen and other players already in the space.

And what are some of those projects on Telegram games and Telegram you're most excited about?

Uh, we work with many of them, so, so, so, so just without, without, uh, [laughs] kind of calling out, calling out, calling out the names, but I think everyone is learning. So if I think about different games, we...

I personally very interested in the teams that are building mini-apps, but they're also combining it with the fintech and DeFi mechanics, 'cause I think it's a strong spot of the Web3.

So imagine you get, um, you get 1 million points or tokens, and then you keep playing.

But if you have additional financial mechanisms, how to stake those products, how to get interest from this through lending protocols, I think it's very interesting because I really view games in the next couple of years becoming essentially the super apps or kind of like your wallet, your, your home, your, your baseline experience and all of the other things like shopping, fintech and, and DeFi could come on top of that.

But you enter initially the launcher or the kind of app store first. So, so, so, so that's what I'm interested in. But there are big players, Not Coin, you know, Bloom, Catizen, I think all of the teams are amazing.

We work with many of them. Uh, and, and you have to give kudos to them because they've been early, they've been early in this space, and Web3 is always changing.

So, so yeah, super, super happy to work with the teams there. Yeah. And I know you have a ton of data, and I would like to deep dive into what do you see in the broader market.

So we have Eastern games, we have Western games, we have, we have the, the whole Asian market. Are there any differences in terms of, in terms of, like, game adoption, Web3 game adoption, types of games that come out?

What, what do you see? Yeah, yeah. And, and I guess, like, on a personal story front as well, we're based in, in US and Canada, so, so we're kind of kicked off here.

So that wa- that was our initial, uh, kind of experience. And then we're expanding into Europe, Middle East and, and to APAC as well, as well.

So, so I think comparing US, uh, and, and Asia, for example, I mean, US obviously leading the, the market, uh, the gaming market from ARPU, all of the key metrics angle.

But I think what's interesting also about Asia and, um, we on the Helika side, we're present in Japan and Korea, for example. Uh, the region is very large. It's very tech savvy.

Um, crypto adoption in many countries like Korea, for example, is higher, uh, than in US, so it's very comparable.

Um, and, and then, and I think from that perspective, the population there, the gaming teams really embrace the innovation, especially Southeast Asia is very interesting.

If you look at various guilds, what's happening in Web3 side, I think, I think it's... we're very, very, very bullish on that.

And also as it relates to AI and regulations in crypto, many of those jurisdictions, they're much more flexible than Canada and US in many aspects.

So if you wanna innovate about specific, uh, you know, game mechanics or specific token types, sometimes it's easier to do it there. Um, and also I would call out, I just came back from Emirates, from Abu Dhabi.

Uh, there was a Abu Dhabi Finance Week. What's interesting about that region, MENA region as a gaming is, is huge, it's, on its own. Like, it's, it's massive. Young population, propensity to spend.

But also what's interesting that the government is doing in Abu Dhabi or Emirates, for example, Bahrain as well, they're creating those, um, uh, innovation clusters for the blockchain team, where in the absence of any regulations, what they're saying is, "If you are...

If you wanna build something here in Web3, don't worry just yet that we don't have any regulations experiment.

See what people are thinking, and once you're ready for specific policy or regulations, we're happy to do it on your behalf." So they're creating those kind of innovation sandboxes, if you will.

Um, and, and that's the role that MENA plays in the blockchain adoption as well. So I think everyone is different, but US and leading the pack, there's no question about it.

I would say MENA region is i- innovation sandbox type of, type of environment. But Asia is a huge market. Everyone plays any game while, while waiting for Starbucks or for food coming down the line, you know? Yeah.

A- Anton, that's super interesting. And before we jump into a short lightning round, I would wanna ask you two last questions.

First one is, if you had one key message you could deliver to a gaming studio listening to this podcast, and then the other one, a message to Web3 game builders, what would that be? Yeah, no, for sure.

I, I, I think we talked a bit at the beginning of the chat about how Web3 gaming was initially overhyped because people were focusing on tokenomics and now they're focusing on gameplay.

I would say that you definitely need to experiment in Web3, but in a smart way.

I think the smart way to consider would be try to launch a version of your game or a new game using social, uh, social, social messaging apps as the channel. Could be Telegram, could be Line, could be somebody else.

Chances are, once you do it, it's a new distribu- distribution channel for you.

Chances are you will be integrating blockchain technology automatically anyway because, for example, in the case of Telegram, the blockchain is embedded effectively in the product.

And so instead of necessarily building, you know, triple A Web3 game, try to experiment small mini-apps, low risk, you can A/B test, uh, and that would be good, uh, good learning and fun exercise for everyone.

So enter- Yeah... your Web3, but in a smart way. That's great, Anton. Let's do a very quick lightning round. Yeah. Short questions, short answers. The first one, what's the first game you played?

Well, it was CS, but actually it was a bit exaggeration. Very first one was Age of Empires. I can't remember, '99? Yeah. Yeah, it was early days. Yeah, I played that, too, and then, uh, Age of Mythology as well. Yeah.

Yeah. Heroes of Might and Magic was definitely on the list. They just released a new one, I think, or it's coming up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And I know gaming is always also attached to, to memories.

F- for me, it's childhood memories, certain games during certain y- years of, of my childhood. Uh, if you could relive one time or one game to bring back those memories- Oh, God... which game would it be?

I'm, I'm 38, right? So, uh, I got 486. Uh, I don't know if you remember th- those computers. Pre-installed version there was Doom, like the shooting game. I, I mean, uh, not everyone might know.

I think it was kind of like literally late nights, I mean, I was like four or five or whatever the, the number is. Late nights, dark outside, cold, and playing Doom. It was like a doomy experience.

[laughs] Yeah, I can imagine. Yeah. [laughs] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, then, uh, a Web2 game that should definitely have a blockchain integrated.

Um, I would think about it less about specific game, more s- about specific game type.

So for example, when you think about collectibles, uh, trading card games, for example, there's a natural use case how do you use a blockchain because it's about ownership. You own your card and things like that.

So it's Magic: The Gathering and, and derivatives of that, uh, as an example would be perfect use case for, for Web3. And last one, if there was a game that you could just take into real life, which game would it be?

Honestly, like I w- like I don't know if you ever played the game Might and Magic. It was kind of like 3D, uh, like walking series. It's like version of Heroes of Might and Magic.

I think any RPG type of experience, uh, Age of Empires strategy coupled with the current immersive technology that is coming live, I think it will be like next level.

What they're doing in Vegas with the, uh, how do you call it? Sphere. With the sphere. You know what I mean? Yeah. So would be, would be next level. Awesome. Awesome. Anton, thanks a lot for coming on the show.

Thanks for explaining us a lot about gaming, Web3 gaming, Helika. Where can people find more about you and Helika? The best way would be reach out on Twitter, so Ha- Helika Gaming is, is the handle.

You can, uh, DM me on LinkedIn as well, but happy to chat, uh, often with the team. We have many, uh, gaming, um, and, uh, crypto conferences as well.

I think the next one coming up, uh, Games co- uh, GDC next couple months, so we're definitely gonna be there, so happy to chat. Thank you for the invite.

That's great, and if you're a gaming developer, you should definitely check out Helika. Anton, thanks for coming on the show, and all the best. Thanks, Marc. Good to see you.

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