Who better to talk about the world of Web3, gaming, and beyond than the person behind what Elon Musk fondly refers to as his burner account?
That’s right – we’ve got @BoredElonMusk on the pod this week! And while his bio may say “Fortune Favors the Bored,” he was anything but boring on this podcast! @BoredElonMusk has built a Twitter following of over 1.7 million since starting his account over nine years ago. You can typically find this hyper-parody account on your timeline talking about gaming, web3, things he wishes were invented, and, of course, Elon Musk. @BoredElonMusk is also a great example of how to take your account growth to the next level. He has taken what he’s passionate about and turned his regular monetization efforts into full-blown businesses -- like his company Bored Box, which helps gamers own high-quality in-game digital assets. While his account is anonymous, it’s easy to tell @BoredElonMusk is an intelligent, driven, funny, and passionate guy who cares about what he does. In this episode, we chat about his personal background, having an online persona, growing and monetizing content, getting shoutouts from Elon, privacy, gaming, web3, and more!
That’s right – we’ve got @BoredElonMusk on the pod this week! And while his bio may say “Fortune Favors the Bored,” he was anything but boring on this podcast! @BoredElonMusk has built a Twitter following of over 1.7 million since starting his account over nine years ago. You can typically find this hyper-parody account on your timeline talking about gaming, web3, things he wishes were invented, and, of course, Elon Musk. @BoredElonMusk is also a great example of how to take your account growth to the next level. He has taken what he’s passionate about and turned his regular monetization efforts into full-blown businesses -- like his company Bored Box, which helps gamers own high-quality in-game digital assets. While his account is anonymous, it’s easy to tell @BoredElonMusk is an intelligent, driven, funny, and passionate guy who cares about what he does. In this episode, we chat about his personal background, having an online persona, growing and monetizing content, getting shoutouts from Elon, privacy, gaming, web3, and more!
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00:00 The culture of crypto has basically created game studios
00:03 that from the get-go focus on collaboration,
00:06 focus on distributed ownership.
00:09 It brings power back to the players
00:11 instead of it all being kind of concentrated
00:13 with the game publisher.
00:14 - Welcome back to another episode of the Wolf Podcast.
00:26 Of course, the world of learning finance.
00:28 I am your host, Gav Blacksburg,
00:30 also known as Wolf_Financial on Twitter,
00:33 where you can find me on any given day
00:35 hosting a number of Twitter spaces.
00:37 Today, I'm excited to welcome none other
00:39 than Bored Elon Musk to the pod,
00:41 @BoredElonMusk from Twitter.
00:43 I love the first start to your Twitter bio.
00:46 It's fortune favors the bold.
00:48 And when people come to this,
00:49 they find out that you are a hyper-parody,
00:51 not just any parody out here, but a hyper-parody.
00:54 And in fact, an electronic hyper-parody.
00:57 You're often on the timeline talking about gaming,
00:59 talking a little bit about Elon,
01:01 talking about things you wish were invented.
01:02 And of course, you have a large audience to speak to
01:05 with 1.7 million followers,
01:07 who I'm sure are always tuning in and listening.
01:09 So let's pull back the curtains a little bit first
01:12 and welcome you to the pod.
01:14 And with that, I would love to get
01:15 a little bit of an introduction from yourself as to,
01:18 you know, I know that there's an Anon component here,
01:20 but as much as you can tell us,
01:22 what's your professional background,
01:23 a little bit more about yourself
01:25 and how you got into this position,
01:26 and we can take it from there.
01:28 - Well, first of all, quick edit.
01:30 It's a fortune favors the board versus the bold.
01:32 - The board, yes.
01:33 Did I say bold?
01:34 - You did.
01:35 That of course is the original expression that I modified.
01:39 Yeah, I've liked this idea
01:40 of rebranding the word board and boredom.
01:43 It's often got a connotation of negativity,
01:45 but I think in today's world where we're, you know,
01:47 we're super connected, always online, always doing stuff,
01:51 boredom is important because that is what often leads
01:54 to creative ideas and problem solving,
01:57 and just a little bit of a break for your brain.
02:00 By the way, quick mention,
02:02 I never knew what WOLF stood for, the acronym,
02:04 so now thank you for providing that explanation
02:08 as an avid fan of yours.
02:09 So yeah, just to dive into it
02:12 in terms of the real human meat bag
02:14 behind board Elon Musk on Twitter.
02:17 So board has existed now for nine years.
02:20 I just had my Twitter anniversary a few days ago,
02:23 which is a relatively long time on Twitter,
02:25 especially for like a pseudonymous account.
02:27 But yeah, you know, the real world person
02:32 that I talk about in third person is, you know,
02:37 a individual who does love gaming, is a game creator,
02:42 who worked in, I guess you could call it corporate America
02:44 in the video games business for quite a long time,
02:47 and really never kind of focused on board Elon Musk
02:52 as like a primary identifier.
02:55 Only in the last year or so did I sort of migrate
02:58 most of my online time from the real world person
03:02 that I am to board Elon Musk.
03:04 And that is because, you know,
03:06 basically the distribution that I've built up over time
03:10 has led me to a lot of interesting opportunities
03:12 from a partnership standpoint, a career standpoint,
03:14 a business building standpoint.
03:17 But yeah, to backtrack a little bit,
03:19 I've always been somebody who's interested
03:21 in creative writing and experimenting online.
03:24 And so board Elon Musk was probably the 10th iteration
03:28 of me attempting to create a parody account.
03:31 For those who aren't familiar,
03:32 Twitter is pretty rife with parody accounts.
03:35 It's, you know, creating this character
03:36 that riffs off a real person or a funny event
03:39 or something like that.
03:40 And yeah, you know, I think as a writer,
03:43 you need constraints.
03:44 You can't just like stare at a blank page.
03:46 You need lines to color inside of.
03:49 And so the idea of a parody account always for me
03:52 was a good constraint from the perspective
03:55 of like comedic writing.
03:56 And yeah, flash, you know, backwards to nine years ago,
04:01 I'm a fan of Elon Musk.
04:03 You know, he's putting really wild ideas
04:06 and real products into the world.
04:08 And he inspired me just to, you know,
04:10 sort of create this character of like him when he's bored,
04:15 which is probably not that frequent
04:16 because, you know, obviously he's a very busy guy
04:18 with a lot of different companies to manage.
04:19 But, you know, I put it out there.
04:22 I sent out a few tweets of just ideas
04:24 he might come up with when he's in the shower
04:27 or taking a walk.
04:28 And it really resonated with a lot of people
04:30 in the tech space and in Silicon Valley.
04:32 And it kind of just blew up from there.
04:33 And I think the consistency of just doing that
04:36 for many, many years is what led me to grow in visibility.
04:41 I will note that for like the last three years or so,
04:44 my sort of distribution, my following
04:47 has kind of like flatlined.
04:48 I think once you reach a certain level on Twitter,
04:50 it's hard to grow.
04:53 And as you alluded to, I've kind of shifted focus
04:56 from being this one-dimensional character
04:57 and being more of a well-versed, you know,
05:02 identity that talks about a lot of different things
05:04 and talks about a lot of things that I wanna talk about,
05:06 the person behind the account,
05:08 not necessarily like what people want this character to be.
05:12 But either way, I've enjoyed that transition
05:15 because it's made Twitter more fun for me.
05:18 It's opened up a lot more doors for me.
05:20 And I like to sort of be in this hybrid reality
05:24 of juggling kind of two personas,
05:26 the real world ID and this anonymous ID
05:29 that provides me with a lot of joy
05:32 and hopefully entertains other people as well.
05:35 - Very interesting.
05:36 What was the, if you could kind of walk me through
05:38 a little bit over time,
05:39 when did most of that account growth happen?
05:42 - It probably happened in year three and four.
05:45 So it was a lot of just kind of grinding away
05:48 and putting out content in the first few years.
05:51 Did get some nice spikes because of getting noticed by,
05:55 you know, well-followed individuals in Silicon Valley.
05:59 And then I think, yeah, year three or four,
06:02 real Elon Musk gave me a few shout outs,
06:04 so that didn't hurt as well.
06:06 And part of it I think also was, you know,
06:08 his growth, his personal sort of spotlight
06:12 has grown tremendously over the last nine years as well.
06:16 So at the time, you know, when I started the account,
06:19 obviously like Elon Musk was a known quantity,
06:21 but nowhere to the degree he is today.
06:24 And I think that I just happened to pick
06:25 a real person to parody that, you know,
06:27 was a very good choice because obviously like he's,
06:30 you know, arguably the most famous Twitter user
06:33 on earth right now.
06:34 So that was a bit of dumb luck, I guess you could say.
06:37 But yeah, the middle of the account's life
06:40 was really where it grew.
06:42 And I think that, you know, as I grew in the distribution,
06:46 I really held back on trying to monetize it.
06:48 I think, you know, people who get a large following count
06:53 on any social platform sometimes rush to try to monetize it
06:56 through like partnerships or promotions or whatever.
06:59 I never really wanted to do that.
07:00 I wanted to make sure I built a reputation
07:02 and, you know, sort of behind the scenes friends and trust
07:06 and didn't really want to cheapen the account
07:08 and that when I was going to sort of use it
07:10 from a monetary standpoint that I did so around something
07:13 that I was passionate about and that, you know,
07:15 felt somewhat on brand.
07:17 So I'd say that until about year seven or eight,
07:20 I really never monetized the Bordelon account in any way.
07:23 - How did you begin monetizing it?
07:24 Was it mostly through marketing your own products?
07:27 - Yeah, I mean, it was mostly that and just like, you know,
07:31 I think after a bunch of time proving my ability
07:34 to sort of think in public and also drive attention,
07:38 it turned into investment opportunities
07:40 or advisory opportunities.
07:42 So, you know, I never was really interested in this idea
07:45 of like, hey, we're gonna pay you X amount of money
07:47 for you to tweet about something.
07:48 I don't do that.
07:49 But, you know, I have selectively become an advisor
07:53 for projects that I believe in,
07:55 or I've had the opportunity to angel invest in them.
07:57 And so, you know, if there are companies that I believe in
08:00 and I talk about them,
08:02 that does indirectly help me monetize.
08:05 That's really been the path forward.
08:07 And then, you know, BoardBox,
08:08 which we can talk about later,
08:10 was sort of the first direct way of monetizing my following.
08:15 And that was very much helped with the growth of crypto
08:19 and in particular NFTs.
08:21 - Let's talk for another second here about Elon.
08:24 You mentioned that he had given you a couple of shout outs.
08:26 What have those interactions been like?
08:27 Have you ever been in the DMs or emails with him?
08:31 It seems like you've obviously been following him
08:32 for a long time.
08:34 - They've been pretty light interactions,
08:36 I would say, at best.
08:38 No direct conversations, doesn't even follow me.
08:40 But he has sort of tweeted a few times about the account.
08:45 One of my favorites was when he basically stated something
08:49 to the effect of like, "A Bored Elon Musk
08:51 is actually his troll account, like secretly."
08:54 And he was, you know, he was being sarcastic,
08:57 but not everybody understood that.
08:58 So there is still a cohort of individuals
09:01 who believe that Real Elon runs my account,
09:03 even though I've been sharing my real voice
09:06 for several years now, and clearly I don't sound like him.
09:09 - How important is it to you to be anonymous?
09:12 - It's pretty important philosophically,
09:15 but for different reasons than I think most other
09:18 anonymous or pseudonymous accounts have.
09:21 You know, I am definitely an advocate
09:23 for the right to privacy.
09:25 But for me, it's more of a branding thing.
09:29 I find that, you know, Bored Elon Musk
09:31 is a fun, lighthearted character.
09:34 People are able to sort of project their own thoughts
09:37 and opinions onto Bored Elon.
09:40 So I think that illusion is important
09:43 and that you break that illusion
09:44 once you sort of know the real person behind it.
09:47 Even, you know, I was even hesitant, honestly,
09:49 to do voice interviews and chats for a very long time
09:52 because I didn't wanna sort of break this like character
09:55 that I had built.
09:57 But ultimately I found that the positives
09:59 overcome the negatives.
10:00 But yeah, I mean, for me, I think it's a nice thing to have
10:05 because if you are, you know, in a particular industry,
10:10 if you were trying to experiment
10:11 at things that, you know, people don't know you for,
10:14 having anonymity helps you.
10:16 It gives you a shield.
10:17 It lets you be more creative.
10:18 It prevents you from having fears
10:21 of looking stupid in public.
10:23 It prevents you from having issues with maybe an employer
10:27 or family or whoever.
10:29 So I think there's a lot of value to it.
10:31 And the reality is that most of the things we talk about
10:35 online, especially, don't really require
10:38 your real government ID to be attached to it.
10:40 Like if I know a lot about video games,
10:43 I can explain all of my knowledge to you
10:45 and have a conversation with you
10:47 without you knowing where I was born
10:49 or where I went to school.
10:50 If I can talk the talk and I know,
10:52 and it sounds like I'm credible on the subject,
10:54 that should be enough.
10:55 So I think that, you know, what I'm trying to do on my end
10:58 is show people they can kind of segment their identities.
11:01 They don't have to bring their full selves
11:03 to every conversation or every profile
11:06 that they have online.
11:08 And for me, you know, I'm actively trying to protect
11:12 the magic of Bordelon's, you know, secret identity.
11:17 At some point it'll probably get revealed,
11:19 but I've done a pretty good job for not keeping it a secret.
11:22 And I think that, to be honest, like people see me
11:25 as a nice person and as an honest person,
11:28 and that has prevented many from trying to dox me
11:33 because they're just like, yeah, he's cool.
11:34 We'll leave him alone.
11:35 We're not gonna like try to, you know,
11:37 pull that thread and see if we can figure it out
11:39 just to be jerks.
11:40 - Yeah, 'cause there are some Elon haters out there.
11:43 - Yeah, I mean, of the real Elon, sure, certainly.
11:46 I think that most sane people understand
11:48 that I'm not that person.
11:49 And personally speaking,
11:51 when you look back at Elon Musk and his life
11:55 and what he's accomplished,
11:56 I would say that quantifiably he's offered
12:00 a lot more positive things to the world than negative.
12:02 He's got a lot more to do, so we'll see
12:04 where kind of the chips fall at the end of his life,
12:07 but I'm a fan.
12:08 - One more question on the account.
12:11 How do you come up with your content?
12:12 Is it mostly just thoughts that you're having?
12:14 Do you sit down and write content weekly?
12:17 - Oh man, I wish that I was like more methodical about it
12:20 where I had like, you know, writing time and all that.
12:23 To be honest, if I was more consistent about it,
12:27 I probably would have far more content
12:30 and higher quality content, but it's all off the cuff.
12:33 It's just, I see things, they inspire me,
12:35 and I tweet them out, and that's the reality of it.
12:39 There is no method to this madness at all.
12:43 - Okay, perfect.
12:44 So we talked a little bit here about BoardBox
12:47 and what you're doing there.
12:49 I guess we'll just open it up with a little bit of,
12:51 you know, what is BoardBox?
12:53 Why are you building in the gaming space?
12:55 And then we can deep dive
12:56 into a few different areas within that.
12:59 - Right, so I will, I think it's helpful
13:01 to just kind of look at gaming and the industry
13:04 at a high level before jumping
13:05 into the specifics of BoardBox.
13:08 But people who grew up in the '80s and the '90s
13:12 and afterwards, there was a really simple kind of system
13:17 for video games, right?
13:18 Like you had a console or a computer, you go to the store,
13:22 you buy a cartridge or a CD, like a physical piece of media,
13:26 and then you play that game and then you're done, right?
13:28 Like that was kind of the model.
13:30 And maybe if you wanted to, you could take that game
13:32 and sell it to a friend or sell it to GameStop
13:35 or a store that, you know, would basically buy it used.
13:38 That sort of evolved later to digital downloads.
13:41 Like you could, instead of buying a physical game
13:43 and playing it on your machine, you could just download it.
13:46 And you owned that digital file.
13:47 And in a way, that digital file was kind of like
13:50 the NFTs of today, right?
13:51 Like you didn't have a thing that you could look at,
13:54 you had this digital copy or, you know,
13:56 instance of a thing that you could use.
13:59 That also, you know, in tandem, or in tandem with that,
14:04 people were also able to buy other things
14:07 that were digital in the game, right?
14:08 So it wasn't just like the actual file
14:11 or the core game itself that were digital
14:12 that people were buying.
14:13 They were buying stuff inside the game,
14:15 like weapons or skins or vehicles and, you know,
14:18 DLC, downloadable content.
14:20 And so that all progressed.
14:22 It was great for game publishers because, you know,
14:25 it's expensive to like print physical media
14:28 and ship it to stores and have to stock it
14:30 and do all these things.
14:31 Instead, you could just have somebody pay the same price
14:33 for a game and then have it, you know,
14:35 go directly as a file to someone's machine.
14:38 And you could do that an infinite amount of times.
14:40 It's a wonderful system.
14:41 It's terrible for GameStop and, you know, Walmart,
14:43 but great for the game publisher.
14:45 But ultimately, all these digital assets
14:48 that you had in a game, you didn't own them
14:50 the same way you own a watch or a car or a piece of clothing.
14:53 You basically just have the right to kind of use it
14:56 in that game.
14:57 And the publisher would always have the right to like ban you
15:00 or, you know, prevent you from selling that stuff
15:03 to a friend.
15:04 Like if I downloaded a copy of a game,
15:06 I can't sell that copy of that digital instance to a friend.
15:10 So that's all the sort of backdrop
15:12 to what led to BoardBox,
15:13 which is you have a growing vertical within gaming,
15:18 which is often referred to as blockchain gaming or PlayFi.
15:22 And the whole idea there is you buy stuff in video games
15:26 and you own that stuff.
15:28 And by own means that you can trade it, you can sell it,
15:30 you can do other things with it.
15:32 And you can basically use those things outside of the game.
15:35 There can be marketplaces for that stuff
15:37 outside of the video game.
15:39 Now you still need the game itself, right?
15:41 To like, you know, actually use that stuff.
15:43 It doesn't sort of exist unless there is a game
15:46 to play it in.
15:47 But what's happened is you have this cultural shift
15:50 happening in the video games industry
15:51 where players are getting more power
15:53 to actually own their digital assets
15:56 the same way that they would own physical assets.
15:58 And so this is growing.
16:01 I'm very bullish on it.
16:03 I have been working in the video games industry
16:05 for a very long time.
16:06 I've seen the shift in the industry
16:08 and how the business models have adjusted.
16:11 And I do truly believe that blockchain gaming
16:13 is going to be a very large and important element
16:16 of the video games industry.
16:18 So with BoardBox, I've built a company
16:20 that's really focused on curating
16:22 what those great games are.
16:25 A lot of people don't necessarily have the knowledge
16:28 or the time to find games that they should be considering
16:31 or they should consider playing.
16:32 And so what we've done is we've built a product
16:35 that basically packages up blockchain game assets
16:38 so people can discover new games.
16:39 And then we put out a steady stream of content
16:42 that brings together people and informs them of games
16:45 that they should be considering.
16:46 So you could kind of argue that BoardBox
16:48 is like partially a media company
16:51 and partially this boutique retail operation,
16:54 if that makes sense.
16:55 - Are there ways for me to come in and be like,
16:57 "Hey, I've played this traditional game.
17:00 "What's the comp for it in a web three NFT world
17:04 "and have games suggested to me?"
17:06 - That's a great feature.
17:08 I think that that is something that we absolutely will do.
17:13 It's a matter of the library of games being bigger.
17:16 The reality is like, I don't think that there's more
17:19 than 20 playable blockchain games right now.
17:22 We're building this business very, very early.
17:25 And that's competing with every major traditional platform
17:28 like Xbox and PlayStation and Nintendo Switch
17:30 and Epic Game Store and Steam,
17:32 where literally there's hundreds of thousands of games
17:34 to pick from.
17:35 So with every new launch of a game platform or a console,
17:40 it starts off small.
17:41 There's three games, there's five games,
17:43 then there's a hundred, then there's 10,000.
17:45 We're in the early innings basically of blockchain gaming.
17:48 So fast forward to 2023, 2024,
17:51 I think we're gonna have thousands of games
17:53 that are playable.
17:55 And then a recommendation system,
17:57 like you've suggested, 100% we could implement
17:59 onto the BoardBox website,
18:01 but the inventory basically isn't there.
18:04 So right now we're really focusing on just,
18:06 kind of hand curation and making recommendations
18:09 based on what games are out there.
18:11 And also just kind of flagging what games are coming
18:13 in the next six to 12 months,
18:14 so people can put them on their radar
18:16 and potentially buy up game assets
18:18 before the games are ready as a means to fuel,
18:21 financially fuel projects that they're interested in.
18:24 - Okay, two questions on that.
18:25 First, when you say buy up assets,
18:28 how exactly is that working?
18:30 And is there a wallet that they're connecting
18:32 to the BoardBox ecosystem
18:35 and then things are owned inside of that?
18:37 How exactly does it work?
18:39 - So with BoardBox, we're negotiating with game studios
18:42 to buy a large volume of game assets ahead of time
18:46 and deliver them to box holders.
18:48 So really simply like BoardBox is a container
18:51 of game assets that were created for blockchain games.
18:54 So normally a blockchain game would set up a mint,
18:57 they would mint game assets to a particular set of people.
19:02 And those people would hold those game assets
19:04 in their wallet.
19:05 So if it's an Ethereum-based game, for example,
19:07 they could see those assets in their MetaMask wallet,
19:11 or if it's a Solana-based game,
19:12 they would have it in like a Phantom wallet.
19:15 So we're not really messing with that dynamic too much.
19:18 It's just that we are packaging up those game assets
19:21 that ultimately will be delivered to players.
19:25 And once they buy the BoardBox,
19:27 they can then open it, quote unquote,
19:29 claim the assets from the games that we've recommended,
19:32 and then those game assets will be delivered
19:34 to their wallets.
19:35 And then it's forever owned by them.
19:37 And those game assets are part
19:38 of the game studios collections.
19:40 They don't need to use BoardBox in any way
19:43 to interact with the game.
19:44 We are simply a delivery mechanism
19:46 and a recommendation mechanism.
19:49 - Does buying BoardBox give you access to all of these games
19:53 or are they basically included in the price?
19:55 - So most of the games that we recommend with BoardBox,
20:00 people don't have to buy game items or NFTs to participate.
20:04 A lot of them are just like accessible to play regardless.
20:09 It's an option basically to own items
20:10 that might come with certain privileges
20:13 or stake in the game.
20:15 But generally speaking, no, you don't need these items
20:20 that we provide via BoardBox to play the games.
20:23 What we're doing is introducing unique items to people
20:26 that would be useful in the games we're recommending,
20:29 but they're optional.
20:30 They are not musts.
20:31 And so you don't need the BoardBox in any way
20:34 to play the games we're recommending.
20:36 And I think that's important
20:37 because we're selling a premium item.
20:40 It's not inexpensive.
20:42 So everyone can participate or benefit from BoardBox
20:46 in the sense that they can see what we're recommending
20:48 and go check out those games.
20:50 If they have some money to spend
20:52 and they wanna be sort of in the premium group
20:55 that we're creating and they wanna buy the assets
20:58 that we're curating for them, that's great.
21:00 That's an option.
21:01 So we're kind of catering to like the luxury market
21:04 within video games right now.
21:06 And over time, as we get bigger and the market expands,
21:10 we hope to make our price points more accessible
21:12 and increase the size of our community.
21:15 - So right now the BoardBox goes for one ETH
21:18 and you've sold around 600 of those, right?
21:21 - Yeah, and we launched our product, the Dayterra Collapse.
21:25 So, pretty happy in the midst of a tough market
21:30 that we were able to sell a very premium item at that rate.
21:35 And yeah, we've got 400 left
21:37 and we're not on any kind of timeline.
21:39 We're going to sell those boxes
21:41 and it'll take as long as it takes.
21:43 Ultimately, our game partners worked really hard
21:46 to build their product
21:47 and we don't wanna look at like discounting or giveaways
21:50 just to kind of move our inventory.
21:53 Sometimes in the space of NFTs,
21:54 people get overly concerned about how fast things sell out,
21:58 but we're not a hype-driven product.
22:00 We're very clearly a business
22:03 that focuses on delivering good games to people.
22:05 And if we sell out six months from now,
22:08 that's completely fine.
22:10 We wanna focus on delivering our boxes to people
22:13 who wanna own these game items and play games,
22:16 not on flippers who are worried about things
22:19 like floor prices and reselling our boxes to other people.
22:23 - How do you decide which games make the cut?
22:26 - It's a lot of sort of art versus science at this point.
22:30 So just a lot of the time that I spent
22:32 in the video game industry,
22:33 I am biased, but I think it made me pretty good
22:36 at sniffing out teams that are gonna be able
22:39 to bring a game to market,
22:41 what games are gonna be sustainable,
22:42 which ones are gonna perform well.
22:44 So we meet with all of our game partners regularly
22:50 and sort of go through the cycle of understanding
22:52 when are they going to release,
22:54 what type of game is it, who is the team behind it,
22:58 what have they created before.
22:59 For the first box, we met with about 100 game studios
23:02 before we narrowed it down to the five
23:04 that ultimately went into the box.
23:06 And there are a variety of factors.
23:07 It's not just about quality.
23:09 I mean, it comes down to what games are available today,
23:12 making sure the genres are varied.
23:14 So ultimately, a lot of my time
23:18 is spent meeting with game studios all day long,
23:20 just talking to different game studios,
23:21 hearing about what they're building,
23:23 and also just getting a sense for their willingness
23:26 to work with us, right?
23:26 Like if there are two game studios
23:28 that are considering working with BoardBox
23:30 and one wants to offer something
23:32 that's a little bit more special to our community,
23:34 we'll probably lean towards them, all things being equal.
23:37 And then, sort of that's the art part of it.
23:40 And the science part of it is we certainly track
23:43 the size of their community,
23:45 the engagement metrics in the game,
23:48 if the game is live,
23:49 just understanding like how often are people playing,
23:52 how many concurrent players are they seeing?
23:54 So it's a little bit of a variety there.
23:57 I think as the market grows
23:58 and there are more and more games in the market,
24:00 our job will become harder
24:01 because there's more and more to curate.
24:03 And so that's where we will need to lean more
24:06 on our sort of inbound and driving game studios
24:10 to wanna work with us so that we can more efficiently
24:14 weed through games that we would wanna consider,
24:17 including in the box.
24:18 - Got it, right.
24:19 Are right now most of the games in a similar genre perhaps,
24:23 or is it really spanning?
24:24 'Cause for example, we've done spaces with Blocklords,
24:27 which is a much more, I would say expansive game, right?
24:31 Where you're actually like going out on quests and stuff
24:33 versus some where you can have really simple games, right?
24:36 Where it's just a, like a Tetris style interface
24:39 or whatever it is, right?
24:40 There can be a lot of range here.
24:41 I'm just curious if there are certain genres
24:43 that you're leaning towards.
24:44 - We definitely try to keep a variety of genres.
24:47 I think that in a perfect world,
24:48 every box is gonna have five games
24:50 from five different types of genres.
24:52 So kind of thinking through the first box,
24:55 we looked at the racing genre, the strategy genre,
25:00 first person shooter.
25:02 You wanna give people like a box
25:05 that doesn't have like five of the same exact type of game.
25:08 I think in terms of scale, that's a different question.
25:12 The reality is a lot of blockchain game studios
25:15 started building last summer.
25:17 Most kind of large scale games
25:19 take two years or three years to develop.
25:21 So you're probably seeing a lot of similar scale games
25:25 right now because those were the ones
25:27 that basically could like bring a market,
25:29 bring a game to market in six months,
25:31 or frankly, re-skin a game they were already building
25:34 that they happened to just kind of like
25:35 tack blockchain onto.
25:37 But yeah, I think by 2024,
25:41 you're gonna be seeing games that are on chain
25:43 that are competing with the same quality
25:46 and scale of games that you would see
25:48 on a Nintendo Switch or a PS5.
25:51 - Why is Web3 technology a ideal fit for gaming?
25:56 - I would not say that it's an ideal or a must.
25:58 I think it's a nice to have.
26:00 I think there's a lot of people
26:01 who are in the space with me
26:03 who really enjoy blockchain gaming
26:05 or the theory behind it.
26:07 They're basically saying like, this is the future.
26:08 This is the only way it's gonna work.
26:10 I'm not that guy.
26:11 I'm not the blockchain gaming maxi,
26:13 even though I run a company that absolutely focuses on it.
26:15 I think that it's a bit of a cultural shift
26:18 that's happening in gaming.
26:19 Like right now, if you asked Activision
26:23 or Electronic Arts to basically change everything
26:27 about how they run their systems and their games
26:29 and like let players like trade assets
26:32 and sell to each other and do it all
26:34 via the existing system that they already have built
26:37 with their own servers,
26:39 they could do it technically speaking,
26:41 but philosophically, culturally, legally speaking,
26:45 that's where they would run into a lot of challenges.
26:47 And so I think that the culture of crypto
26:52 has basically created game studios
26:54 that from the get-go focus on collaboration,
26:57 focus on distributed ownership,
27:01 focus on interoperability.
27:03 And so it's done very efficiently via crypto,
27:08 via blockchain, but it's not a must.
27:09 I'm not gonna be that guy who says that.
27:11 But I do think that there's something to be said
27:15 about things happening in public,
27:18 like things on the blockchain are public,
27:20 they are trackable, they are immutable,
27:23 they're easy to sort of not dispute
27:26 versus a game that makes decisions
27:29 in a very centralized way where certain players are banned
27:33 or certain characters are eliminated.
27:35 Like that's all done very kind of behind the scenes
27:39 these days.
27:39 So I think the reason that people really love this idea
27:42 of games on chain is that it just,
27:44 it makes, it brings power back to the players
27:47 instead of it all being kind of concentrated
27:49 with the game publisher.
27:51 - Got it.
27:52 You've been in this industry for a decade plus at this point,
27:56 perhaps even two decades.
27:58 How do you think gaming is gonna change
27:59 over the next five to 10 years?
28:01 - I think that what you're already seeing
28:04 is the shift away from just straight up buying games
28:08 at a certain price point.
28:09 And instead like free to play has become
28:11 more and more the norm.
28:13 And games basically monetize through in-app purchases
28:18 and downloadable content
28:19 and sort of aesthetic opportunities.
28:22 That trend will continue, absolutely.
28:25 I think one big shift that you'll probably see
28:28 that will give more accessibility to gamers
28:30 is not requiring people to buy
28:32 these really expensive consoles or computers,
28:35 but rather be able to play any video game
28:37 of any quality in their browser
28:40 with the game itself running on a server somewhere else.
28:44 Services like Google Stadia,
28:46 Amazon have experimented with this,
28:49 Microsoft is doing it as well.
28:51 And that's really important, right?
28:52 Because not everyone can afford
28:54 a $600 video game console or a $1,500 PC.
28:59 The mobile phone made gaming a lot more accessible
29:03 in browser gaming is going to further that.
29:06 And then I think looking further into the future,
29:09 in a smaller way, I think that augmented reality
29:13 is going to become really important.
29:15 A lot of people are betting on this idea of virtual reality
29:18 and sort of putting on these goggles
29:19 and having this immersive experience.
29:22 I'm not personally sold on that
29:23 because I think the barrier of entry is still very high.
29:26 But augmented reality,
29:27 the idea of sort of like taking your phone with you
29:30 into the real world and having a gamified experience,
29:33 I think that is absolutely under-explored arena
29:38 with a few examples like "Pokemon Go" having some success.
29:42 But I think that's going to be an absolutely huge area
29:46 for video games to expand.
29:48 Yeah, those are some initial thoughts
29:51 about the future of gaming.
29:52 And I think that as a final thought, I would say,
29:56 and this is very much self-serving,
29:57 but I think curation in gaming is going to be needed
30:00 because the reality is that there's so many video games
30:03 to play today.
30:04 And they're not just like games
30:06 that you play once and you're done.
30:08 They're games that are constantly updated, right?
30:10 So like "Fortnite" and "Fall Guys" and "Call of Duty,"
30:14 these games are getting constantly updated.
30:16 New seasons are being added.
30:18 New content is being added.
30:20 And so every game is not only competing
30:22 with every game that existed before it,
30:23 but it's competing with every game that existed before it.
30:26 And that game is being updated.
30:28 So there's a lack of attention
30:29 and there's a really difficult time
30:32 for game publishers to kind of stand out.
30:34 So I think anyone who's kind of acting as a curator
30:37 and highlighting games that people should be playing,
30:39 and we're trying to be that,
30:41 is going to be very useful for people
30:43 who are just overwhelmed with the amount of entertainment
30:46 in gaming that exists.
30:48 - You know, speaking about the AR side of things,
30:50 that's exactly what we discussed on our space
30:53 this past Monday, the one I asked you about
30:55 on the Metaverse one for 7pm.
30:57 And what we were talking about specifically
30:59 was a conversation around how really AR
31:02 is going to probably be that big next step.
31:05 And it's going to really happen once we get to the point
31:08 where it's almost like AirPods, right?
31:11 Five, 10 years ago, you see people walking around
31:13 with like these in their ears, probably 10 years ago.
31:16 You'd be like, "What are you doing?"
31:17 Like that is the weirdest thing that looks ridiculous,
31:20 but now it's norm, right?
31:22 They remove the headphone jack.
31:23 And we were saying, you know,
31:24 it kind of has to get to the point where like Apple's
31:26 creating AR goggles and it's weird
31:29 if you don't have them, right?
31:30 Like they're the in for business, for everything.
31:33 And that's when we can kind of make some of these
31:35 transitions to really having AR as a component.
31:38 - Yeah, I mean, I certainly would love to be able
31:40 to enjoy these types of experiences and be outside,
31:44 not be stuck in like a dark basement
31:46 with a giant screen in front of me
31:48 or goggles strapped to my face.
31:49 Like I would love to walk through a forest
31:52 and that to be gamified where I'm enjoying nature,
31:54 I'm enjoying the fresh air, I'm getting exercise,
31:57 but also I'm playing a game at the same time.
32:00 - Absolutely.
32:01 Would you say your main goal now with Twitter
32:03 and your Twitter account is focused around BoardBox
32:06 or are there other goals you have for it?
32:08 - Oh, I don't have any goals.
32:10 I just wing it.
32:12 It's like asking just a person who has a Twitter account
32:16 for their own name, like what's the goals for your account?
32:19 I mean, I'm really not that methodical about it.
32:22 I certainly want to use my Twitter account
32:25 to grow BoardBox and also entertain other people and myself.
32:30 I think one of the coolest things over the last two years,
32:35 especially as I've been like doing more voice chats
32:37 and stuff is honestly the relationships
32:40 and the conversations I've had off Twitter, right?
32:44 Like the direct messages and the emails and the phone calls.
32:47 It's been a really good way to have an in
32:50 with interesting people, right?
32:51 So I'll put it this way, like, you know,
32:54 somebody who I admire would probably not have a conversation
32:59 with like the real world me
33:01 if I emailed them randomly wanting to talk,
33:03 but if Board Elon reaches out to them and they're like,
33:05 oh, this guy has 1.7 million followers,
33:07 I'll give him a shot.
33:08 And so that's the in.
33:10 And then when we have the conversation,
33:12 generally speaking, they find that I'm interesting
33:14 and nice and they want to have that relationship with me.
33:17 So I guess like to answer your question,
33:20 if I think about it a little bit more,
33:22 if I can continue to leverage this account
33:24 to build stronger and more robust real world relationships
33:28 with people I admire, that's a win.
33:31 And I'm happy with that being sort of the focus
33:34 of this account for the rest of my life.
33:36 - Do you shoot your shot a lot?
33:38 - Yeah, I do.
33:40 I'd say at least once a day.
33:41 And I usually have a pretty strong conversion rate.
33:44 - What goes into that initial DM?
33:46 - So if they follow me, it's pretty easy.
33:49 It's like, hey, I'm working on stuff,
33:51 you're working on stuff, let's take time to chat.
33:53 And I'd say like 90% of the time it works.
33:56 If it's somebody I can't reach directly,
33:59 I can almost certainly find another person
34:02 that already I am connected with
34:03 who can make the introduction.
34:05 So two degrees of separation, I would say,
34:07 to basically anybody on earth is where I'm at these days.
34:12 So yeah, I've gotten pretty good at networking,
34:15 but I have a very strong set of ammo
34:19 with the Bordelon account that helps me get the ins.
34:22 And the more the person is kind of not in this space
34:27 in social media, in web three,
34:30 funnier the conversation is.
34:31 Because if it's somebody who works like,
34:34 who's very much like rooted in the real world,
34:36 quote unquote, I have to kind of always start
34:38 the conversation with like, yeah, I'm a pseudonymous account.
34:41 I don't really like share my identity.
34:44 It's kind of this caricature.
34:46 And that takes the first two, three minutes of the call.
34:49 And then they get over it really quickly.
34:50 And we talk about what we wanna talk about.
34:52 And when they hear my voice, they know I'm a real person,
34:54 not some shadowy super coder
34:56 who doesn't wanna reveal anything about themselves.
34:59 - Very fair.
35:00 What's your favorite web three
35:03 or blockchain based game right now?
35:05 What are you playing the most of?
35:07 - Funny enough, I'm gonna be talking to them later today,
35:09 playing a lot of eevee.io.
35:12 It's a really simple to get into a first person shooter.
35:16 It runs in browser.
35:17 It's just like, get a bunch of friends,
35:19 jump into their site
35:22 and you can start playing a game immediately.
35:23 So that's probably where I'm spending the most of my time
35:26 from a blockchain gaming standpoint as of this week.
35:29 And I still love traditional video games as well.
35:33 I play a lot of Rocket League.
35:34 And lately I've gotten back into a game
35:36 called Mario Times Rabbids,
35:37 which is a lovely little strategy game.
35:40 So I try to dedicate at least an hour a day to gaming
35:43 if I can.
35:44 - I'm a big Overwatch guy.
35:47 - Nice.
35:47 - It's still got my heart.
35:49 So it hasn't gone anywhere.
35:50 Okay, just a couple of the questions I was curious about.
35:53 I've seen you tweet several times,
35:55 I wish that this invention was created
35:58 or somebody should do this.
36:00 I'm curious, Elon likely is gonna have to buy Twitter.
36:03 Wants to make some changes.
36:05 I'm sure maybe if you've thought around it,
36:07 whether sarcastic or not with your tweets,
36:10 some changes that could be made.
36:11 You've been on Twitter a long time.
36:13 What's one, or if you wanna give me a few features
36:15 that you think could be added to Twitter,
36:17 and then maybe any ways that Twitter could be gamified
36:19 to make it better or have web three components.
36:22 - Oh man, I've had so many thoughts over the years
36:24 about how to improve Twitter.
36:26 I think that just giving--
36:29 - Shut it down.
36:30 - Yeah, like if Elon doesn't buy Twitter,
36:33 maybe I'll come in with a second bid, like a lower bid
36:35 and they'll accept the offer.
36:37 But I think primarily just giving users more tools
36:41 to control their content feed is really important.
36:45 Everybody kind of understands that you can like
36:48 let the Twitter algorithm feed you information
36:51 or you can like go chronological,
36:53 but even that doesn't quite work.
36:56 I think that giving people stronger tools
36:59 to filter for certain topics, for certain words,
37:03 to focus on individuals that they wanna follow more easily.
37:06 It's all very clunky right now.
37:08 And I find that like, I have to work really hard
37:11 to just see the content that I wanna see
37:13 from people I've already opted to follow.
37:15 On the flip side, and again, super self-serving here,
37:18 but like, I'm a little salty
37:21 that I built up this large distribution
37:23 and that not everybody who wants to follow my content
37:26 can see it because somehow whatever I do on Twitter
37:31 seems to not optimize well against the Twitter algorithm.
37:35 I guess that's a little like, I don't know,
37:38 arrogance on my part.
37:39 Maybe I'm just not interesting anymore and nobody cares.
37:41 But I feel like what's happened is that
37:44 there have been sort of these like backroom decisions
37:50 that were made at Twitter about like
37:51 what content works well on Twitter and what doesn't.
37:54 And that's not something that the users are aware of.
37:56 And so like, I feel like people don't change very much
38:00 in terms of their content,
38:01 but then a switch gets flipped at Twitter
38:04 and all of a sudden they're not getting the engagement
38:06 they used to, which, you know,
38:08 it's not really like an ego thing.
38:09 It's like, you're just not reaching the people
38:11 who have agreed to, you know,
38:13 like be in a relationship with you online.
38:16 So that's something that I've continued
38:19 to be a little salty about.
38:20 And I'd like to see that change.
38:21 And if real Elon takes over, I'm sure he'll help with that.
38:25 - So like an open source algorithm?
38:28 - Yeah, like give people a few sort of default templates
38:32 for like, this is the type of algorithm
38:33 I would like my feed to work off of
38:35 and let developers build ones themselves
38:40 that they can either sell to others or let people use.
38:44 Like back in the day, in the early days of Twitter,
38:47 you know, Twitter let like developers
38:49 and encouraged developers to build all sorts of stuff
38:52 on top of it.
38:53 And then they kind of shut all of that down, unfortunately,
38:55 and they wanted to control the full experience.
38:57 I think they need to go back to the day of like having a,
39:00 you know, an SDK and like letting developers
39:02 build cool stuff for others to use.
39:05 I'd like to see them return to that.
39:07 I have a feeling that Jack Dorsey wanted that to happen.
39:10 He is, you know, now no longer focused on Twitter.
39:13 So whoever the new owner of Twitter is,
39:15 I'd like to see them return to their roots.
39:17 And I do think that that will help
39:19 actually boost the user base of Twitter
39:21 and ultimately help them with their, you know,
39:24 their revenue goals.
39:27 - Yeah, I think those are some good points.
39:29 I think Elon did mention
39:30 wanting to have an open source algorithm.
39:32 There's a lot of confusing parts
39:33 to the algorithm right now, for sure.
39:35 There's also a lot of ways that Twitter, you know,
39:38 what always mind boggles me about Twitter is
39:41 billions of dollars of business are done on Twitter.
39:43 I would probably say like weekly, if not daily.
39:46 There's so much money that moves through,
39:48 whether it's for marketing, for retweets,
39:50 for something else, and Twitter gets none of it, zero.
39:54 And surprisingly, they really haven't tried
39:57 to build any tools to actually assist
40:00 in the monetization that would allow them to take a cut.
40:02 They made super follows, which are basically
40:05 the internet version of pay me and I'll be nice to you.
40:08 And there's just not a lot out there.
40:09 Do you see any other ways that you work stuff in?
40:12 - I mean, I definitely agree with you
40:13 that they are not tapping into the money
40:16 that is flowing all around them
40:18 between the lines of what Twitter is able to control.
40:21 They're hyper-focused still on the ad model
40:23 and the traditional ad model is dying.
40:26 So I think that, you know, they could create more tools
40:29 that would facilitate commerce on their platform
40:32 that they could then take a cut of.
40:33 I mean, kind of going back to video games,
40:34 it's like the reason video games, you know,
40:37 create new content and skins and all these things
40:40 is 'cause people like to, you know, look cool online
40:43 and they will pay for that privilege.
40:45 And so, you know, Twitter explored some of these things
40:48 with like the NFT skins and all that,
40:49 but I don't think they're doing it at a rapid enough clip.
40:53 And I think there's a big opportunity to kind of focus
40:57 on like giving people the status
40:59 that they're eagerly looking for and charging them for it,
41:02 instead of trying to optimize this platform
41:04 for serving ads to people
41:06 who are increasingly not paying attention to them
41:08 or not even seeing them in the first place.
41:10 - Got it.
41:11 Okay, that all makes sense.
41:13 Really love everything we've gone over.
41:14 This was super helpful for me to learn more as well
41:17 about the Web3 and gaming.
41:19 I knew a good amount of what you were doing at BoardBox.
41:21 We talked about it on Spaces,
41:22 but I think for more people to learn
41:24 because it's the first place that I've seen really
41:26 this creation and curation of games happening
41:29 in the same spot where I'm pretty sure
41:31 you've worked on some of your own stuff,
41:32 you've brought in others,
41:33 you're clearly kind of becoming a central hub,
41:35 but it makes sense, right?
41:36 'Cause something like a Steam, like an Xbox,
41:38 like you said, there's just hundreds of thousands,
41:39 but this is a whole new genre in reality.
41:42 For people that are listening to this pod,
41:44 we'd love to give them some type of call to action.
41:46 Is the best place to direct people
41:48 right towards the BoardBox, right towards your Twitter?
41:50 - Yeah, that would be great.
41:51 We're @boardbox_ on Twitter, boardbox.io.
41:55 And of course, if gaming's not your jam,
41:58 I'm @boardeladbusk on Twitter
42:00 and occasionally say interesting or funny things
42:02 and always appreciate a follow.
42:04 - Love it, love it.
42:05 Yeah, definitely everyone should go ahead and check it out.
42:08 Board's also very gracious with his follows towards others.
42:11 You follow a bunch, which always makes people feel good.
42:13 I'm sure they get that big follow account.
42:16 - Love to reciprocate.
42:17 - Yes, we'd love to see it.
42:19 It's really, really nice.
42:20 Awesome, well, I really appreciate the time today.
42:21 This was super cool.
42:22 I'm diving way further into this industry.
42:24 I'm doing like two to three gaming spaces a week now
42:27 that are focused around with three,
42:30 around different ideas with that.
42:31 So I'm just trying to be a sponge and absorbant,
42:33 just ask as many questions as possible.
42:35 Really appreciate your time
42:36 and hope you have a great rest of your week
42:37 and everything you're doing
42:38 and looking forward to seeing what BoardBox accomplishes.
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