Episode 32: AI is Just a Paintbrush: Building the Future of Gaming with ChainCraft

00:08

Welcome back to the marketing booth today. I Ryan Beltrain from chain craft a little bit of different different vibe Yeah,  it’s crypto. It’s gaming.  Maybe we don’t want to leave with the crypto part, but it’s gaming. It’s crypto. Yeah,  Welcome to the show. You’ve been on the other boost marketing or the other boost channel shows the social ledger So it’s it’s fun to have you here this time. Thanks for having me. Yeah cool  Tell us a little bit about yourself and then tell us about chain craft. So  two questions all at once

00:37

So I’m Ryan Beltran.  I  born and raised in San Antonio.  Always been sort of a techie at heart.  My background is actually  in film and video and tech.  I started a nonprofit that uh dealt  with uh bringing  students uh challenges to building water purification kits that could then be taken like all around the world.  We went to the White House with that. uh

01:06

back in the day with saws. It’s pretty cool. So yeah, yeah, I was making an actual impact and getting to do the White House. think that was a cool, cool thing. That was fascinating. Like that. That was a so wonderful. And I got to meet a lot of wonderful people through that. But yeah, that has been a journey. And so I’ve always been like when new tech came out, like like just tinkering with it and checking it out. And so blockchain was one of those things.

01:36

um really got into just the  ability to, you know, like decentralize uh finance  and, uh but also like the kind of neat innovative  online things that people were doing on the fringes outside of just finance with it.  And then AI came around  and I really got into that too, because it was just so helpful with Makewater,  just helping uh with just doing so many tasks easily  and just  how fascinating.

02:05

It is for this time  When did you get into the the blockchain like  are we talking?  Bitcoin era or more of like 2018  it all kind of so funny because I’m such a techie that like Bitcoin did come across my path but I didn’t bite like I I think I was like traveling in my life that time like  and At the time my first thought was like Bitcoin like digital money doesn’t pay power to do that and then I never thought about it. Yeah

02:35

Oh man, I wish I did because I usually do just dive  into things. uh But yeah, so when I really got into it was  in I think 21. Okay. And um it was through gaming actually, there was this uh project called the sandbox that was  selling game land.  And I thought it was interesting. So I bought some and then I saw it went up in price. So I sold it and I was like, wow, this is interesting. I made a little money, but  I just liked the idea.

03:05

and always have and always will and still like in my heart this like, game assets, you can own them and resell them and not have to like deal like, like if ever you wanted to resell something in an MMO, you’d have to like do it off like in  like you could break your um contract with World of Warcraft. You World of Warcraft is a prime example. They would sell accounts. Yeah. would do it, CSGO, people would sell stuff. Like it has been an under market.

03:35

uh for you know  forever like people would buy like  Seasons Call of Duty accounts because they were just so happy or Xbox accounts like they wanted to have that high rank without the grind I really think there’s this like water behind a dam that is just like starting to overflow where these people a lot of them don’t even realize that’s a possibility but once they’re like hey I can sell my account and it’s not like gonna get anybody banned if that becomes more of a like

04:04

and a more understood possibility,  that’s really where blockchain,  think, would shine. And I think it’s just a matter of time,  whether it’s gonna be sooner or later.  But anyway, that kind of is a good segue into ChainCraft,  because it’s blockchain and it’s AI,  and it’s merging the two  in this sort of way that really is creative,  and just  setting up tools for game builders and game players.

04:32

to have their own economics and how they can make money while they make games,  collaborate on making games,  and do it in sort of this intuitive way. And that’s sort of from the very beginning what we wanted to do with Chain Craft.  I like it and I think there’s a moment. Stardew Valley  is  like one of those games where… Cade plays it, my kid loves it. It’s an amazing game, but  it was one developer that,  I don’t wanna say slaved away, but  he gave his whole life to that game, built it himself.

05:02

I think he composed the music like really I think he did so many parts to it himself and it paid off to some extent and I’m seeing more and more and we were talking about this a little before the show is these developers come on they get they get to steam they get either destroyed or they get praised yeah and I’m seeing a lot more single indie games pop up that are really well done yeah and they’re also really fun and the dynamics are different like can you

05:31

Explain chain craft a little bit more. I know it’s text-based and I played with it a little bit but but give it give me the Yeah elevator pitch. So the elevator pitch is that if you are creator we want you to have uh a really easy time making that vision that you have become a reality  but not just stopping there because there’s a lot of uh AI game builders or just AI uh projects out there that help you build things um but we want to go the extra step where

06:00

We not only want you to build it well and not so buggy, but also uh have economics and a method and a route to earn like revenue from it. So a lot of places you will  build a game  and  usually they’re like touted as one shot game builders, one prompt, which sounds amazing,  but in real life that’s, that’s a fantasy. Like you can’t build a robust game in one prompt. Like it takes, it takes a journey. Like you have to like  be.

06:30

a little bit of back and forth with your game, you have to mold it like clay. ah But even so, it’s like those uh use brute force to try to make a game that then you have to debug.  And that takes a lot of time, a lot of AI tokens, whereas we’re trying to make it in this way  where there’s a strong foundation, where we actually have a great engine  that you interact with ah until you can iterate and then even open it up early, have people play it,  get feedback, and then keep.

06:58

keep even building the game after it’s published, you can update it. um So have that path, but then also have a way that’s very already embraced and that’s through  predominantly items.  So like item sales and items can be things like, uh oh, like each item could be a life to play a game or each item can be your stats or I mean your gear um that you acquire in the game or uh cards or abilities or spells. um You can get kind of creative if

07:27

in that little like sort of uh sandbox itself. So that’s kind of the way we’re doing I like the idea of a life one. Yeah. Like I’m thinking of a game right now. Like I know there’s some games out there where you play it once and you have one life and after that you can’t play it again. Yeah. Like it would be kind of cool to you know buy a life and you know play it through and then that’s that’s that’s it that’s over. You gotta buy another one or the spell one’s interesting. Yeah. Thinking oh

07:55

Survival type games where  you could go, you know do something and then  you need a spell to breathe underwater or yeah thing like that  and there’s a there’s  You know, there’s so many ideas that I’ve had to like just put on this list of like I have our roadmap and then I at the very end I have this like really long list. It’s the wish list that that I’m like, no, this is not yet the road parking lot Yeah, yeah, I throw it to that wish list and if you go through that wish list, there’s some amazing things that we can build with

08:24

foundation we have and some of them get into like, uh because it’s multiplayer inherently,  you don’t have to make your game multiplayer, but it’s browser based,  you don’t have to like download anything.  We’re really trying to reduce the friction but some of the game ideas are like uh live making spells on the spot like who can make a spell faster and will it work? it not? Like uh

08:48

involving like contracts, like being able to lose all your gear, like and somebody else take it or a boss take it and then you have to go and  battle it to get it back.  There’s a lot of  things like that.  And I can’t even wait when more people come and give their ideas in two cents, like the sort of ideas we can build. the foundation is

09:07

is a lot of it is there, it’s like 90 % there. The rest of it is a lot easier to lay on to it, lay over it and build on top of. that we’ve that. And what’s interesting is, I think, and again we touched on it a little before, is I think crypto right now has a big marketing problem. It’s confusing, it’s hard to use, and a little over complex.

09:33

For for what for what it should be  I think  you say crypto to somebody and also because I don’t want to think about getting a wallet and on ramping and all that  you you were talking about it like  The  the future of your game the future of everything I think it’s gonna become infrastructure and  getting people to your game is not gonna be crypto like can you kind of  yeah talk through that because it’s a confusing thing when you say crypto you think super techy, but

10:02

Yeah, in reality, you don’t want it to be I’m glad you bring that up because um I could be talking about chain craft without even bringing up blockchain like the idea is to get it as Frictionless and as simple as possible. So you just focus on the game  You focus on like if you earn money  that the on ramp and on off ramp for that money is very similar to what? Everybody’s already used to  Just the infrastructure being blockchain  and a lot that’s already built on it. So

10:32

That’s the method that we sort of have. We’re building this platform to be very much for just gamers. You don’t have to be a techie.  And I’ve,  I feel like I’ve lived through like the internet and how it grew and how hard it was to use. Like  it’s showing like my age, but like I use Prodigy and then I use AOL and it was very chat roomy and  you know, the  using the phone line to, so I, I saw how things got, were very high friction and how

11:00

If you just gave it some time and people kept chipping away at the infrastructure just to make it easier and easier and easier,  that’s happening with blockchain. It’s just going to become  a boring thing in the background that  is doing a good job at something or taking out the middleman of something and kind of pushing the benefits to the user.  And so  I know that and I’ve seen it in other realms so I just know it’s going to get there. Like I’m just trying to build  and meet it. uh

11:28

to be there when it happens, you know? That’s a good way to put it. And especially  if you think early internet days from like 1995  onwards, it was hard. You you didn’t really have anything. AOL kind of revolutionized it.  And then it just got easier and easier. And then Google came about and Google was kind of the glue that got you from, you know, going, going somewhere to actually like finding another website, finding another thing, because before then you had to just.

11:55

You have to know where you’re going or you have to know what you want to do. to be advertised to, like where to find that thing, that site. Or you were stuck in AOL where it was just there, it was a centralized service. you didn’t even really have, like I remember being on AOL and it mostly chatting to people. It was the community part that was actually really mind blowing. Yeah, and actually going back to games like,

12:22

Some of my favorite games were like MMOs like EverQuest was like one of my all time favorite games.  Biggest MMO before World of Warcraft. um And I loved World of Warcraft too, but just EverQuest had such  a  profound impact on me, like how you were connected to people.  And honestly, there’s a lot also that was never done just  the way they did it, even for that time. um Kaplan actually has like  the head of Blizzard, he was like one of the

12:51

top guys at Blizzard had a really great Lex Friedman podcast. I’ll recommend that to anybody.  Where he had a big part where he’s like EverQuest was like such a big part of my life and got him into  Blizzard actually. ah But anyway that community aspect is a big part  that I love about  what we’re also trying to build on ChainCraft is that when you build  you’re going to be able to build either parallel to some other project if they allow it. Like you can build items for somebody else’s game.

13:19

And that’s another thing that you don’t see. It’s kind of like mods  these days. Yeah, yeah. They’re not fully sanctioned, but I think of Valve and  there was a game that  the Valve abandoned in the community, essentially built all around and then Valve finally  released it as like an official  one. But essentially, you’re going to let, you know, creator creates the games and then all of the fans and all the creators can kind of contribute to it to make it the community run version of it.

13:47

So yeah, exactly. if it’s,  it  can be a little bit more interoperable than that. Like if it’s a card game, for instance, our first kind of  version of ChainCraft that’s gonna be our first major  sort of game category is gonna be TCG. So it’s very item, very easy  to cross over if you’re a normal gamer, to  items are gonna be cards, virtual cards. um And ah so if I make a…

14:14

uh dungeon crawler or something with like D &D rules uh I can make a campaign for it  and then somebody else can be like well I’ll make a uh way to like uh craft items from the items in your  campaign or I will have uh another like dungeon like part of your so it’s like it is kind of like the mod community  but a little bit  like easier you could do it from your phone without like really getting into code or anything like uh I’m excited for that aspect.

14:45

That’s very cool.  Now you’re talking community. I want to talk the marketing aspect. Like I know you haven’t you haven’t hit the market yet. You’re not fully released. But  how are you looking at the marketing? How are you going to this into the hands of people?  So  it’s going to be like a couple of different methods. One of the biggest  I think for us  is partnerships.  There’s a lot of already existing like people out there that play and build games, card games, uh D &D games.

15:14

Hard games are like, TCG is just such a huge uh market right now. um And there’s a lot of people who build  IRL ones and virtual ones.  And it’s very easy to say, hey, this is a game that you can actually try your game on our platform.  And you get  like 95 % of the revenue versus what we get  compared to what you could get. um And you can instantly try out.

15:38

and iterate uh your game ideas and mechanics. So there’s a lot of time where people are making something they don’t have anybody to play with. uh It’s easy for them to do that.  But then also outside of that, we’re building  the way the economics are set up  is very incentivized to be self-propelled. So part of the marketing growth that we have  is based on other blockchain projects that we’ve seen have the same uh sort of virality and word of mouth that has been able to…

16:07

grow exponentially, especially within this space. It’s a tiny space, the blockchain space, especially like  crypto, Twitter and stuff.  So when something comes out,  it can get really big fast, especially in the AI being another layer of it. And we know we have that like one shot, so we don’t want to ruin it. So we want to have all these features set up and those features include  referral links, uh earning if you get somebody else  on  that makes a game and they make money you could earn as well.

16:36

uh And another one is  the actual, like when you make a game, there’s an easy way to share about it and post about it.  When a game ends and if it’s like a really fun or interesting game that turned out, you can share that moment  because the games have a state on our website. So every game you can go back and revisit. It’s like there.  And that will also have a way to refer somebody in. So there’s a lot of this like community aspect. uh

17:04

where you can share what you have built with others and they have, or you have incentive to share and then building on our platform you have incentive because you could earn if you bring people in to sell cards, sell items, sell packs,  things like that.  I think there’s two parts to that. There’s an affiliate kind of methodology to it which  I believe the internet really built out and affiliate marketing is a massive thing out there.  And then the other part to it is creators.

17:35

More than ever people are becoming creators and people are looking at it as a business and a job like  one and one. Yeah, you know they they own the business and they own the job. It’s the classic uh dilemma that many people run into.  And then there’s that affiliate system where there’s probably just somebody who’s like man. I you know come play with me and then  you get more money that you can spend inside of the game.  It  is.

17:59

AI having like an influence on that, like I  feel like AI is preventing you guys from going and just like doing mass like outreach and all of that anyway. So you’re looking at it as like a  one-to-one, let’s get real people to. I think that’s the base layer of it, but there’s certain things like where AI actually becomes helpful with  marketing strategies, but also  the trends in AI. I,  every little, every little innovation.

18:29

gets so over, I see it five times.  So that’s another one of those things that we’re waiting on until we have  a few of those in the pipeline  that  we have routes to be able to share this aspect of our game uh is innovative  and when it’s ready to be shown  to the public, those are things that are very shareable uh and very retweetable. Those are those things that I’ve seen things that.

18:57

are nowhere near what  we’ve done uh in scope and scale,  get tons and tons of views, just get viral. So  part of that is that  you can’t ever completely bet on like, oh, I’m gonna make it and they will come. So there’s this mixed model of that, but also working one-on-one with like  game creators who have made in the past, streamers who have made games or build games or play games. uh And we have access to a few of those as well. So it’s gonna be like a mixed bag of things.

19:26

And then another thing that blockchain kind of has that like the Web2 space does not have like um everything that  your history is on the blockchain. It’s a legend. Like it’s there. Like you see histories of who’s played this game, who’s played that game.  There’s  stagnant NFT projects out there, game projects out there. And there are people who are just like, oh, I loved this community and it just kind of died out.  Those are wonderful. Just waiting to be poked at like,  like potential customers.

19:56

you easily have access to through the wallet, through the ledger, the blockchain. I’ve seen a couple people do this, like a couple of other businesses do this as a way to really catch fire and get those projects to come on. that’s another route we also have in our tool belt to be able to say, hey, this project, you can come and mint a game or mint a game piece.

20:23

comparable to like the NFT you have in this project and it’s a unique one to anybody in this project. Maybe you get like a month to mint  and that can be part of this game or that game.  How are you reaching those influencers like the gamers and everything? they inherently interested in this or are you like doing cold outreach or you building relationships? So this gets into like the entrepreneur like me showing the vulnerability side. It’s like we’re in this  spot of like a gap  of uh we have the engine.

20:52

We have the foundation,  but there’s that traction side where some features we still want  to have.  we have,  everybody that we’ve shown it to  is like, want graphics, I want UI, uh and those are the things that are our next phase.  they’re interested, but they want to have something more to sink their teeth into. And  that’s  on our uh actual next agenda, next step, uh to fill in that gap, to get to.

21:22

to get these people, these early people that have checked it out and were like, that’s cool, it’s tech space right now, which honestly will only get you so far. So that’s what we’re excited to be able to be like, oh, now you have a lot more to sink your teeth into, visual and to show off and share. The visual is really big. I went to Dallas recently and I went to, it’s called Cidercade, if you’re ever in Dallas, you should go check it out. It’s got retro games, like pinball machines, but there was a few games that were just.

21:50

really basic,  one of them was, I don’t know the name of it.

21:58

there’s two people fighting  and one of them has to run to the right and then make it to a door and if you can get to that door you win  but that other person’s running after you and trying to just kill you. you before you get to the Yeah, get to the door and then you respawn and then while that person that just got killed  is respawning the other person’s running to the other door  so it’s a constant battle back and forth  and that was just a fun game.  Graphics were just…

22:26

Bismillah bad. Yeah, yeah from the  80s. I believe yeah, but those are like things that I wouldn’t have thought would have been fun But it was something that I would have played with a friend. I would have streamed on on twitch  Those are the games that  that are in there and those are the things that yeah, like  it’s just just a little visual when you add exactly like oh like you don’t need to have like beautiful amazing like  like for instance like Google came out with that  you can  walk in a

22:56

like generated space, you know, and a lot of people made like, looks like I made it look like a game,  this, that, and it’s really cool.  But then it’s just cool for like,  you know, 30 seconds. And there’s no depth. There’s this really beautiful and it’s really like exciting about like the technology side of it. And it probably costs a ton of AI tokens to do,  but um we want to live and at least start and our wedge  is those like, just be creative. Like if we, if we have the foundation of you being able to make like a game, like you said,

23:25

Like one of my favorite games right now,  when you have constraints, you do what you can, at least for me starting out, testing out the platform, you do what you can within those constraints and you get creative. um The game that I like is Superhero Showdown, which is very simple,  you versus another person.  You quickly come up with any kind of being or superhero  and the AI will battle them and it’ll give you a narrative of who won and it’s kind of silly, kind of like  announcer style.

23:53

But even  stuff like that little ideas  Where  oh you can have AI be a factor in this game, which is a new thing  or not  We kind of just want to build those tools and make it as easy low friction for anybody to build and sort of see those things that pop up so  Interesting part on the AI, you know, you’re talking about it creating but it’s also  with a person creating like

24:19

A lot of artists that I know and a lot of people that I know, like we’ve seen the college speeches, somebody says AI and they just get booed continuously. It sounds like you’re saying that creation with AI is gonna be a thing and that creators just have to kind of embrace it in a path here. Yeah, I think so. I kind of also go back to, I have a background in like, I told you.

24:47

film and video and before that photography, um I loved photography. I went in college to learn how to do the darkroom.  Even a bit in high school. I still have the smell of the developer and stuff.  And um I was there when digital started to come in.  And I very much  saw the parallels of like, digital. It’s…

25:10

uh nowhere near as good and it’s ruining it. You know what I mean? And there were the people that were on this like spectrum of like just  you mentioned  digital photography and they would just shut you down right then and there to, you know, like right in the middle. um I would say I was like, and this is digital here. I was like right here. I was like, okay, I want to learn like digital. Like uh I’m open to that. And I see that same thing with AI  and it’s understandable. There’s things.

25:36

that when there’s such a big transition, you have to be thoughtful about it and understand it. um But I really think at the end of the day,  like creativity and creators,  like AI, and maybe one day this will be different, but AI still doesn’t have taste.  Does not have good taste.  it’s  like if you are a creator that has good taste, has  a unique  style, like that is,  and not just style, it’s still the taste, you know?

26:05

the way of doing things. It’s like you have your niche, you have your ability to do that. And AI is just sort of this tool. It’s another paintbrush. It’s just a new paintbrush. And that’s how I look at it. So I try to be thoughtful about the way I use it. And I know AI games and game development is very polarizing. But at the end of the day, if a game is made that used AI that is good, it’s just going to be a good game. Yeah. You know, like if it’s slop, you know.

26:33

tear it down because it’s a bad game. Tear it down because it looks horrible, doesn’t draw you in, doesn’t have any depth.  So  at the end of the day, that’s how I look at it. I like it and I agree with it that I always tell people that AI doesn’t have taste.  And I’m seeing it more and more.  People that are using AI, sometimes they’re the most creative people and they’re able to build something  that’s so advanced that you would have never thought of or been able to build it as a human.

27:01

but now you have AI to process a lot more data. And then that person was able to creative solutions for a problem that was not easily solvable pre-AI. And even to that point, there’s like this, if creators embrace it as a tool, part of our mindset and going forward with ChainCraft is like, if you are an artist, you can itemize or tokenize your graphics, your style.

27:30

so that you can get royalties or sell that that other people use in their games. That makes me think of, it was that trend, it was related to the anime style that everybody did on- Like the Ghibli? Yeah, the Ghibli. Yeah, yeah. Like if artists could do that and then get a small commission every time and AI generated the same style, like those would be really cool usages and royalty systems because

27:58

copyright wasn’t made for the digital age. you know, the copyright rules are if you make a copy of a song and you burn it onto a CD, you’re breaking copyright law. Like, we need a modern system and it sounds like in a lot of ways, blockchain could bring that for creators and people on internet. Yeah, and I just see this route, you know, people are making, there are sites where there are loras where artists will make their

28:28

style of something that you can utilize. It’s just so dispersed or so specific, like when you go to a site that it’s for this sort of use where we want to do that similar thing where if an artist has a great skin or style, your card back or your card style or your plaque, like your playing field, your tabletop could be in that style. And then they get a little royalty off of every time they sell a card. So everybody sort of wins in this, in this setup. If we do it just right and the creators have a little bit more freedom.

28:57

of how their economic model’s gonna be. We’re just again trying to set up the tool set and have this like listen to the creators and see how best we can meet them for what they’d like the platform to have and then follow through. I like it. The final question I have is you’re an entrepreneur, you’re struggling through this just like all of us have. What advice would you give to somebody that is trying to build a game out there, trying to build a startup similar to yours?

29:26

I would say like always,  know, people have dreams and they really want like, you can sometimes be so headstrong on something, but always double check it. Like check yourself, like check what other people like get feedback on your idea. Cause if you live in like an echo chamber,  like you may be going down the wrong path on building something.  So  that is a strong thing that I say is like be checking what you’re building, what you’re passionate about and see if you’re  like, maybe you need to just adjust a little bit. Maybe you need to drop it completely. uh

29:56

but I think that is such a big thing that people don’t do that is very helpful. It’ll do nothing but help you if you get enough feedback about your. Yeah, step outside that echo chamber. exactly. And I see that a lot as people ask their friends and their friends are the same, you know, they’re cut from the same cloth. You’re the accumulation of the five closest friends you have. And as soon as they step outside, they’re like, oh my gosh, like this isn’t really.

30:23

Really doing it or they’re just telling me what I want to hear, you know, like the classic part. Yeah.  Well,  Ryan, really thank you for joining the podcast. Where can people find you on the internet? Like, do you want to share the chain craft anything? Give them, give them the links out there. go to chaincraft.games is our main website and at chain craft games for Instagram, Twitter. Uh, you can find us there.  Uh, and through our website, you can find our discord,  uh, come there and you can reach out to us and maybe get an early play test. Yeah.

30:50

Perfect. We’ll put all that on the show notes and thank you so much, Ryan, for joining us. Thank you. Great to be here.