In an exclusive interview with cryptonews.com, Frédéric Chesnais, Founder & CEO of AlphaVerse, talks about web2 games built on web3 tech, the future of web3 gaming, and the emergence of streaming.
About Frédéric Chesnais
Frédéric Chesnais is the Founder and CEO of AlphaVerse. He was the CEO of Atari Interactive and brings experience in investments, executive production, budgeting, financing, and management of intellectual property rights, with a strong background in video games and interactive entertainment. He has successfully completed financial transactions in excess of $1 billion in the interactive entertainment space. He left Atari in 2021 to focus on blockchain and metaverses, with the creation of Crypto Blockchain Industries.
Frédéric Chesnais gave a wide-ranging exclusive interview which you can see below, and we are happy for you to use it for publication, provided there is a credit to www.cryptonews.com.
Highlights Of The Interview
- Semi-Fungible Tokens – The future of non-fungible tokens
- The AlphaVerse: A metaverse hub focusing on a mix of interests, including video games, entertainment, arts, sports, etc.
- Onboarding millions of users to Web3
- 1% of users account for all revenue in gaming
- Web2 games built on Web3 tech
- Emergence of streaming – it’s here to stay and getting more popular
Full Transcript Of The Interview
Matt Zahab
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Cryptonews Podcast. We’re buzzing as always getting into the month of December now, it’s nice and cold if you’re living in northern part of the world. And if you’re living down south, God bless you, you are very lucky. Today’s guest is Frédéric Chesnais, who brings experience in investments, executive production, budgeting, financing and management of intellectual property rights with a strong background in video games and interactive entertainment. He has successfully completed financial transactions in excess of 1 billion in the Space. He started his career way back in the day as a CPA and financial consultant moved into an investment banking and was also part of the management team at Atari Group, one of the biggest game behemoths in the Space. And he also brought the Atari Group out of bankruptcy and became the CEO and main shareholder engineering, an absolutely incredible turnaround of a business which was in dire straits. Present day he is running up the team at AlphaVerse, a Metaverse hub that will feature neighborhoods focusing on a mix of interests, including video games, entertainment, art, and sports. Without further ado, I’m very pleased to welcome Frédéric Chesnais to the Cryptonews Podcast. Fred, welcome to show my friend.
Frédéric Chesnais
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Matt Zahab
What are you smiling? For? What? What did I say?
Frédéric Chesnais
Let’s start and let’s do it. So.
Matt Zahab
Yeah. Is the French accent, okay?
Frédéric Chesnais
It’s okay.
Matt Zahab
I’m getting there. I gotta get my reps back. And again, quite the bio. And for those at home, I’m sure one name particular sounded very familiar. And that is Atari? Who is the massive company behind a multitude of AAA rated games? Can you tell me some stories from your time at the Atari Group and what you and your team did to turn it around and bring it out of bankruptcy?
Frédéric Chesnais
It’s very funny, because, you know, it’s true that my background sounds more like, you know, someone coming from the investment side and less from a programming or computing background, right. And it’s true. The reality is that, you know, I’ve always loved video games, and I knew I was not Spielberg. So I knew I was not the guy who was going to be able to create the product, so to say, but at the same time, I knew exactly, you know, where to find the money, how to organize the deals, and I think I got a, I had a good sense of where the market would go. So this is where, you know, 25 years later, I’m still here. But it’s, you know, it’s has always been a passion of mine so I bought it. I was part of a team first, we bought it in 2000, from Hasbro. And it was losing a lot of money 250 $300 million a year. And we renamed our company, we sold it in 2007. And then in 2012, the going to come to the story in 2012, the hedge fund, which I bought the company from us, basically five years ago, they called us, we call in they said look, you want to come back because we not only we’ve put back and joined to bankruptcy, but we the fund, we’re also going into liquidation. So at the time, you know, I had basically a week to make a decision. But I knew I wanted to make the you know, I knew I wanted to make the investment. So I did it and it was just like a very desperate situation, because we had basically no revenue, 1 million euros and we had 35 million euros of debt. So it was a pretty desperate situation. At the time it was what was really funny is that it took me a week basically to make the deal because I would enter the data room and I had signed all the contracts five years earlier. So I knew all right. So we are basically bought a studio, which we had sold. So during five years, this is what they had done. But the rights it was basically what they had put in place 5, 6, 10 years ago with the team. So it went very quickly. And I knew I wanted to make the deal. In the most frightening part of it was in the auction process because Atari was in bankruptcy. So it was an auction process and we had to basically fight to make sure that we keep the brand because you had a couple of people who we’re going to make some offers, you know on the assets. But crazy that no one made the offer on the Atari brand so we were able to keep it until just quite stunning at the time. So, now I think it’s better of course, we turn it around, we created, you know, the actual hotels, we created DHI VCs. And they left last year because I wanted to do this virtual world. But I think it was, you know, it was a pretty good run for eight years. So now there’s a new a new team in place since what 2020? So wish with them all the best. Just moving on, right?
Matt Zahab
How crazy is it building a AAA game, like I didn’t really know about this until getting into crypto a couple years ago, and working with some companies who are in the, play-to-earn, but the Web3 Gaming Space, and a lot of these execs that I’ve been fortunate enough to work with have come from the Web2 Space similar to yourself. And I started doing my research and hearing stories from them about building a game costing hundreds of millions of dollars. And like on the consumer standpoint, uh, you would never know that right? I would have never thought that to build a Call of Duty or a Grand Theft Auto would cost that much money. But when you’re literally building a map and a world and characters and everything from scratch, not quite from scratch, because there’s previous stencils and whatnot, but it’s absolute bananas, like any stories about how much of a nuisance it is and how bananas it is building a AAA rated game.
Frédéric Chesnais
Look, in fact, the most difficult part is the first game. Because if you have hit when you have no problem financing, the second one, the sequel. And if basically, it’s a dog, you know that there is no sequel, so no one cares about it.
Matt Zahab
It’s also such a risk, right, because you really don’t know if that first game is going to take off or not.
Frédéric Chesnais
Yeah, so the way we do it is, and this is where online is very interesting. Back in the day, you know, if you look at the end of the 90s, and the early 2000, even 2005, 6, 7, we were still selling boxes, so you will have to basically make the Full Movie, put it in the box and then ship the box. It was impossible to fix the bugs. The point is only what 5% I mean, these are the official stats or close to the official stats only if five persons ever finished a game. So you have to finish the basically the production you have to finish the movie. But you know that only 5% of the of your audience is going to watch the end, right. That was a big risk because you had to develop the game, manufacture, make the marketing campaign, prepare everything and then you will know right if the game would sell. Today, it has changed a lot, especially with mobile and the online so to say, possibilities you can read basically release a game with less levels. I’m not saying it’s a bad game, it’s a game that is all finished, you just don’t need to finish the full game before you can release it. You can also you know, with the private betas, public betas you can also get a good sense of where you’re going. And you know that if no one likes it, it’s easier and it’s better to kill the game right now, which is very difficult to do.
Matt Zahab
You can sort of test product market fit, whereas nowadays you couldn’t.
Frédéric Chesnais
Yeah, but most people don’t know how to kill a game. Because it’s very difficult not from first you lose money you’re like, shoot, I really have lost all this money? Second needs also pride to receive a failing, no, it’s impossible. I’m right, they are wrong. And you can see people they never want to stop. Because they think it’s easier to try to finish the game and try to launch in and hoping for a miracle, right? It’s a Hail Mary in American football. No, it’s true. But when it doesn’t exist, trust me, if, after one test two tests, five tests, people are saying that the game doesn’t work or is that good game. It’s not going to change. So it’s a very courageous decision. You need to be able to kill the game. It’s a tough decision.
Matt Zahab
And let’s pause on this topic for a bit more here. Sort of the some of the biggest changes that have happened to the gaming industry, you know, post 2000 kind of thing. I know Facebook, and the launch of Facebook and Farmville and other games that were available on that platform. That was a huge change because the distribution model right before it was like well, alright, well how do you find people now? It’s like, well, if you launch on Facebook, you have I don’t know back in the day and we’ll call it the late you know, early 2000s 2005 to 2012 kind of thing. You had a couple billion people not like today three and a half or 4 billion, however many on Facebook, but you still had a potential market of a couple billion, which is absolutely massive, where in the old days, it wasn’t right, you’re shipping to places like EB Games, which is now GameStop. And stuff like that. And you know, Feature Shop, Best Buy and hope to get lucky. Not lucky, but hope that a lot of people will purchase your game. And then you have the Mobile Game Run of 2010 to still present day where you just need to have it on either the App Store or Google Play. And now we have this new shift, which is going to Web3, where, again, very difficult to onboard because of the nuances of Crypto. But what sort of similarities do you see between the last two big shifts in the gaming industry and the current one that we hope to see with Web3? Are there any like really easy tell tales that are just like so friend of mine, and so low hanging fruit-ish?
Frédéric Chesnais
At the end of the day, it’ a question of experience, right? If your game is good, no matter where you’re in, you’re just going to make it. Right. So I think the issue I see with the current Web3.0 is it’s, for me, I’ve seen a lot of games where basically, the whole point is to issue a token, sell the token, and when really forget the game, right and forget to deliver the game and forget to develop the game. It’s absolutely, you know, move on often. So as part of the new company, we also invest in some games. So we have like, a small team looking at, you know, investments in potential games. And more, you know, more than enough, you want a situation where we say, look, we don’t think you need a token in this game. Why do you think you need Blockchain? Not even the token? And there is no good answer to these two questions, right. And then you realize that the only purpose of the team is to basically I will talk to you and sell it to a bunch of investors. And then okay, see where the game will go, right. So I think, if you want to invest in for those of you know, for those of you listening, if you want to invest in Web3.0, first, there are two questions, apart from the experiences. Do you really need Blockchain? And you really need a token? Because if you don’t need Blockchain, if you don’t need a token, then just a you know, the regular games, because at the end of the day, it’s not going to work, right? You if you own Blockchain, it’s because you really need Blockchain to deliver something, you need something good for your audience. And if you need a token, just you know, really, I know it’s always, hey let’s issue 1 billion tokens, I’m going to take 5 million for me. And if the stock, the price of the token goes to more than a million, right, this is what everyone used to think that I think, is wrong.
Matt Zahab
It’s all financial. Everything’s financial incentives, at least it has been for the last year and a half. And I think people are finally starting to realize that play-to-earn is a bit of a hoax, right? The purpose of games have always been to pass time, to have fun, you know, to enjoy spending online time with your friends, it’s never been a financial incentive. And I don’t think that will ever change. If we can get to a point where it’s like, Hey, play the super fun Blockchain game, but also have the potential to earn, I think that’s where the market needs to go. Not, you know, you will earn, it’s you can have fun and perhaps earn.
Frédéric Chesnais
But you see, you don’t get except poker, you know, I’m not talking to some games, right. But I think it’s clear, you know, and you see it coming. When you again, I’ve remember seeing some decks and I’m like, you don’t need Blockchain, only the token, you can just have a very fun game. And by the way, your experience is so. But I think so far I’ve seen great games. I’m not going to mention any game. But I’ve seen great games on Web3.0 because you can clearly see what Blockchain is used for a purpose and there’s not always a token. So I’ve seen great games but at the same time, you know, and this is what people remember you see too many cases where it’s a token just because it’s a token to try to bring it to the moon and I think it’s always backfires.
Matt Zahab
What needs to change Web3 Gaming like what do we got to do to onboard you know, next couple million people, everyone’s talking about everyone wants to do it, what needs to change? There’s just a matter of time.
Frédéric Chesnais
So what’s what I don’t know exactly, but what we’re doing so I don’t have a general answer to the general question. But what we’re doing in fact, we have, we’re using Unity, so Unity or Unities is the same, right? It’s a general it’s a public was an engine, it’s all over the place. And what we are just doing, we’re offering an experience where you don’t need Cryptos or you don’t need a Crypto wallet to join. It’s really a free to play game. It’s a free to play world. When you join the world, you can as much as possible, we all offer as, whenever possible, we offer the option to pay in FIAT. Of course, if you resell an FTM not connected, he can be paid in FIAT, right. But I believe that there’s many ways where, at least for the first transactions, you can sell tokens against, you know, FIAT, and then players can use the tokens you’ve just purchased to buy NFTs, yes, but even sometimes you don’t need NFT, right, you can just deliver the game asset. And you keep the NFT for the players. And so we’re trying to do is we’re trying to offer whenever possible, an experience in the FIAT for the microtransactions. But at the core, a world is open, and you don’t need Crypto, to join and to enjoy the experience, you know, we know that only what one 1.5 2% of the players are paying. So the most important is to have an open world free to play. And then anyone can join, can enjoy the experience. And after that, you start making microtransactions. But the ratio is 1%. 1, 1.5, 2%. I was the executive producer on RollerCoaster Tycoon Touch, on RollerCoaster Tycoon online for many years. So we know the ratios in know it, it’s not like 5%, we were at 1.5 and 1, 1.5.
Matt Zahab
And that’s total. So the total chunk of users who play the game, 99% are free to play and will never purchase anything in game and then that 1%, so that 1% is accountable for all the revenue for game. Yeah, wow, that’s insane.
Frédéric Chesnais
No, it’s on hyper casual games, it’s even lower. But that’s what you just have to be careful, right? These guys pay meaning gun, I’m gonna give you a data, right? If you’re paying user, you don’t mean it’s clear when I play some games. And there are games where I will never pay never. But there are other games where I pay and when I pay, you know, 25, 30 bucks a month? Because I like it.
Matt Zahab
That’s absolutely insane. And these 1% of users, like, when you find this Whale per se, who is your Black Swan? Or obviously there’s, you know, hundreds or 1000s of them. I guess in some cases, maybe millions. But when you find these hundreds or 1000s of people, the 1% of users who are accounting for all revenue, what do you do to sort of give them some VIP experience? Like how do you? How do you get more out of them? How do you keep them? How do you make sure they don’t churn?
Frédéric Chesnais
Yeah, it really depends on the game. The most, for me, the most important is the number of friends you have in a game. Because the more friends you have the least likely you are to leave the game, right?
Matt Zahab
Smart, smart.
Frédéric Chesnais
If you have invested a lot in your avatar and your character and you already have like 100 friends in the game, you’re not going to quit. So it’s more important to just to keep building this experience, to keep you know, entertaining the basic experience.
Matt Zahab
So when you’re creating a game, it’s paramount to have some type of game loop that includes being able to have friends, whether it’s onboarding friends, or just keeping them leaderboards, you know, so on and so forth to make sure that they don’t leave the game, I would have never thought that that was such a catalyst for growth. And that was so important.
Frédéric Chesnais
It is super important.
Matt Zahab
And what other under the table aspects or stats do you have that are incredibly surprising, like you just gave me 2 where 1% of users account for all revenue in game that surprised me and of course, friends in the game equals not leaving the game. Those are two that really surprised me. Do you have any others that you know, someone on the outside wouldn’t find so obvious?
Frédéric Chesnais
Yeah. Let me give you another one. For instance, today when you release a game, if you spend, let’s say 100 to make the first game the first release, you’re going to have to spend 1000 down the road meaning it’s going to cost you 100 to deliver a first playable and then if you’re successful you’re just gonna keep spending more and more money. So it’s super important to know exactly you know, your business model and to know these numbers because it’s not a hit and run right system. It’s back in the day it was hit and run meaning taking game put it on the shelves make sure that there are not too many bugs and you know hope for the best. Today it is different today. You’re just basically storing everything starts when you ship the game back in the day everything hands, you know when you would ship the game. So today is very different. You ship, you start, you on Apple and Google most of the time. And I think this is if your game is very successful, you just have to be ready. You know to have a long development schedule with a lot of content to be released so you need to have a plan, at least for the first six months post, or your initial release, otherwise your users which is okay, what’s new, right? What’s new in this game, so it’s better, most of the time to, if you have like, a game, it’s better to keep some content right away, not ship it with the initial release, and then release it one week, one month, two months later, so everyone understands. But you’ll give us something and then you just have to keep building.
Matt Zahab
Keep delivering, another thing that I find very interesting about today’s gaming. And this is applicable for literally every company in every industry, the importance of becoming a media company. And I think I first really understood this honestly, three, four years ago, when a16z Andreessen Horowitz like you know, one of the biggest VCs, if not the biggest VC in the world, built out their own media arm. And when you have a company who literally prints money, you know, hand over fist, creating a media arm, that’s powerful, that says something and now every single company is also creating media, you know, use, we can get into AlphaVerse, for example, but any just AAA rated game, and each successful game, whether it’s mobile or desktop, they’re still doing, you know, media campaigns that almost have nothing to do with the game, or are creating new media that has very little to do with the game, just because we live in a tension economy, and you need to keep your community involved, you need to keep giving them those dopamine hits, that’s a change that, you know, it’s pretty crazy as well, like, you even look at the Call of Duty releases now they have these like two and a half minute videos that must have cost, you know, 10 million to make, and they have famous movie stars and athletes in them as well. It’s pretty crazy.
Frédéric Chesnais
There’s a convergence between video games, movies, basically entertainment or digital entertainment. Yeah, that’s true. But games are even bigger today when movies you know, because.
Matt Zahab
I know. It’s insane.
Frédéric Chesnais
Movies, you can’t really you know.
Matt Zahab
You don’t do it once. You watch a movie once, maybe twice if you love it 10 times ,a game, you can play for two hours a day, every single day.
Frédéric Chesnais
And from a business standpoint, it’s a very difficult business model, because you have to basically carried in this investment, all the way to the end. And then you release it and you hope for the best, you know, that? I remember, there was one movie that was killed, what, four, six months ago. And it shocked the industry because we said look, we have the movies ready to go, it’s not good enough, we’re just not releasing it. It’s an incredibly, you know, tough decision to make.
Matt Zahab
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Frédéric Chesnais
AlphaVerse is a virtual world. It’s an open world. And our goal is to connect as many digital worlds as possible. Wherever they have Crypto and then no Crypto, we are just connecting as many worlds as possible, right? So once were in my because I didn’t want to make a bet on building one type of game because you never know what’s going to work and what’s not going to work right. So what we did in was basically to create a central place, a hub, which is a virtual world, which is a Metaverse and from this, it’s built on the Unity. And from this hub, you can connect and you can join as many worlds as possible. So you can go to an island, with roller coaster games, you can go to another island, but with music, we can go to another island about photo but art is another one about there’s going to be one but football, soccer. So it’s really from that central place, you can join as many worlds as possible. And second, not only we can connect our own worlds, but we can also connect third party worlds, right, worlds that have been developed and that are operated by third parties and from these worlds when you join them, you know it’s very it’s basically assuming this right you seamless you don’t need to recreate a new account, it’s as part of the same world. But we do not operate these worlds, right? We are just pushing our own world and then we’re connecting over worlds. So that’s what we’re doing. It’s a universe of universities. That’s why it’s called AlphaVerse. And on vision is to be okay, whenever you want to know what’s going on, right, in the world of digital worlds, or Metaverse is you can just go to AlphaVerse, and then from there, you’ll be able to first get the news, you’ll be able to play to meet people, and then you’d be able to connect over worlds. So that’s what we’re doing.
Matt Zahab
And on the user side of things, if a new user wants to join, like, what do you need? What’s the barrier to entry?
Frédéric Chesnais
So what we’re doing is we’re, you’re, we’re getting theme by theme, right? So we have music. So we know we’re getting a lot of users from music, I’m going to have football, European football, soccer. So we’re gonna have a lot of players here. It’s an open world, so you can just download the client and you can join, and you don’t need to own Crypto, you don’t need to have a Crypto wallet. And this is what we’re doing to get the users we’re going theme by theme. We’re looking at big, you know, verticals. And from there, I think it’s easier for us, you know, to build this way, also to connect different worlds, it’s easier for us, because then I can just build five worlds. At the same time, I can make five worlds, which is for you know, one given month, and then I’m gonna keep doing it the same. But the way we work is that we have the central place, we connect our own worlds, we connect worlds, it’s made by third parties, but it’s not because one world is late, but he’s going just to jeopardize everything right? We can, instead of connecting five worlds, we’re going to connect four worlds, it’s much more nimble by doing it this way. And then you know, it’s a long-term play so we don’t have the pressure to say, we’re going to launch everything by that day. I remember when I release RollerCoaster Tycoon Touch in 2017, right, five years later, the game is still running. And we’ve added so much content. So it takes time, just do it step by step.
Matt Zahab
So just the slow process steady wins the race, just like you said, keep shipping, keep delivering, keep giving new stuff and new things to do for the users and sort of the rest takes care of itself.
Frédéric Chesnais
Exactly.
Matt Zahab
And you guys are also from my research that I’ve done. You are, you know, part of the ETHOS of a Web2 game that’s built on Web3 tech, you know, very Web2 play and feel. But behind the machine, you’ll see a Web3 motor.
Frédéric Chesnais
Yeah, it’s you know, at the end of the day, made overseas on the video game world of Virtual World with a Blockchain layer on top of it, right. So it’s back to what we were saying earlier. Just make it simple. Make sure that you first think about the experience. And you really think about okay, do I really need to add Blockchain here? Do I really need to have a token? And some of these? Well, we are just going to have, of course, the Blockchain. But we’re just going to be a token standard token, right? We it’s not even sure that we’re going to have a token in each I mean, a specific token in each and every world is going to be the general tokens called CRYSTAL, we’ve created on 600 million of it. And I think this is just going to be sufficient.
Matt Zahab
I love that. You guys have also partnered with some massive people in this Space, you’re going to showcase the music of David Guetta. And you also announced the deal with a Chi Modu, or rather the Chi Modu states and he was one of the most one of the best known photographers of hip hop artists in the 90s. I didn’t know who he was until I did research for the show. Pretty darn cool partnership. How did you get those guys in bed? And what do you plan to do with them?
Frédéric Chesnais
First, I knew it’s always easier. But having said that, you need to convince them that we are not making a mistake. And by joining the project, right? So I think what brought them to us is in this world, in AlphaVerse, you can stream content, right? Meaning as long as you have the content on Twitch or YouTube, you can stream it into our world. What I mean by this is, you take a big place, you take an arena, you take your house, you take a flat, whatever you know your goal is what your ambition is and then in these places, you’re going to find some video players some huge TV sets. And on this on this TV set, you can stream your content. So let’s assume that you are an upcoming you know, musician you want to well create an audience, you want to make sure that everyone knows what you’re doing, you even want to raise more money to finance your big album. So what you do you come to a Fabros, you take one of these houses, you can upload your logo on the outside, you can upload your name on the outside and on the inside, you can organize your house, so you can have billboards, you can stream your content, which is already on YouTube. So it’s not like an additional work to do. And then players we’ve gone visitors, we’ve gone even like it, when it’s your decision with your job to have a special, you know, presentation will be both dedicated to you know the deal you want to make. And if you don’t want to make a deal, it’s fine, you can just, you know, create your audience, you can sell them flat in the upper levels, you can create a VIP section. So it’s basically it’s a 3D so you say opportunity to create your audience. Why do you need Blockchain because then you as an artist, you can resell your house, or you can also create your own NFTs. Your own collection of you know, we’ve spent very specific content. So this is where the Blockchain is very interesting. You can also if you want a situation where you can have some mini games play to earn services, you know, it’s always very important to understand why you need the Blockchain. And here, we can definitely have a situation where Blockchain is very helpful. If you are photographed, for instance, especially in the Chi Modu world, you’d be able to do the same. You organize your own EXPO, you can sell your own photos using NFTs. Blockchain is very important for that. And then afterwards, you can also you know, try to find people to help you for your next project. It’s always you know, it’s all about the use cases. And we believe that if you can stream content, right, in a virtual world, it is a very powerful tool to help you bring an audience and to help you create your own community, because it’s all about digital data. And it’s all about you know, videos. And this is what we’re bringing these tools, so it’s easy for you to stream any content in this world. But when I say any content, this is why we want the content to be first on YouTube and Twitch because of some good filters. Otherwise, you know, we don’t want to end up with a lot of unwanted content. So I would say.
Matt Zahab
Well said, Fred, you brought up a great point about streaming, man, that is something that I’m so interested in present day. And candidly, I wish I started a couple years ago when it really started blowing up. But when you’re building a game, nowadays, you almost need to include the aspect of stream ability is your game stream-able, because I feel like it’s very tough to create a game that’s going to you know, get so popular that the masses jump on to it without the streaming aspect, like it’s become such a huge part of gaming. You have content creators who are streaming you know, 10 12 hours a day making millions of dollars a year, couple 100 grand a month, and all they do is play video games on Twitch or YouTube. It’s a lot I don’t even know the word to describe it. It is beyond banana lands. It’s crazy. Do you think we sort of had an apex point in the streaming world, do you think it’s still gonna grow? Like, was this on your guy’s radar when you’re at Atari? Walking through your thoughts on the whole streaming process?
Frédéric Chesnais
Yeah, I think you know, it’s back to so it was we knew it was going to happen and it was not because we knew at the time that the business was very difficult right and it will take some time to make a living right out of this so it was not but I think it’s here to stay you know, it’s much more fun to watch people playing video games to have a story about the story. I think it’s a lot of fun and it’s here to stay and it’s much more fun to watch these types of contents rather than you know, sit on the couch and be offered like a random content. So this is why I think that it’s difficult I mean the TV business is very difficult as we all know you but now we have the tools to build the content we want and to enjoy the content we want we know okay, we can go here we can go here you have Netflix you have Twitch you have all these platforms. And I think it’s very difficult now to be in the TV business.
Matt Zahab
Yeah, well said Fred, what a treat I know we’re gonna hold tight for time here, let’s jump into the hot take factory it’s a segment we always do on the show. Give me a couple hot takes can be anything can be politics, sports, food, geo you name it doesn’t have to be Crypto or gaming related, but give me a couple of Fred hot takes that only you believe in, and something that most people do not.
Frédéric Chesnais
I love Space, meaning exploration. It’s not about mass or, you know, because when guy was already taken care of that, but for me it has always amazed me, you know, a big in, you know, Space is. So I’m really interested by that I look at, you know, the time it takes to go from point A to point B, look at asteroids, mining of asteroids. I think it’s, you know, this is the next kind of, you know, milestone next big objective for us. I’m not, again, mass is one thing, I think Moon is more important initially because of the water on the moon. Right. But, you know, I think it’s incredible, you know, the pace of development and the pace of progress in general, right? You have a lot of people suffering on Earth, don’t get me wrong, I get that a bit all over the place in Africa. So I’ve seen my share. But I think at the same time, you know, you need a lot of efforts and a lot of progress to be made. And for me, I went over a few moments from time to time my deck, while watching videos on Space exploration, and I was enjoying that.
Matt Zahab
Would you go? Would you get on that on the Virgin ship? Or that Jeff Bezos penis looking ship and go to Space?
Frédéric Chesnais
No, because it’s not really for me, I’m more interested in the project. For instance, if I could, you know, once I’ve have more time, do a kind of mining operation on asteroids just never really for the money, but just to prove that it can be done, right. I’ve had a lot of conversations, and I’ve looked at some business cases on that. It’s very interesting, it’s, you know, this is where you have a lot of material, this is, for me, also a great way to fight against climate change, because you can grab a lot of resources in Space, but you don’t have to mine, you know, on Earth. The last 20 years, I’ve been for me, extremely important into when you look at the progress. You know, I think, if you really look at what has happened, you know, over the last 20 years, now you launch a product. And five years later, the product can be just that it can be a hit. And then it’s dead because there’s something new that is basically replacing the product. In the 90s, it was the fax machine. I mean, fax were great. I remember choosing some fax machines, but now who is we use is a fax, right? It’s that if you look at the smartphones, right, today’s smartphone we have today are more powerful that the laptops that we had was in 2005 2007. Basically, you know, the analysis. So you can have a product that is being launched, and then four or five years later is going to become obsolete. So the lifespan of a new product today is very is shorter, right to, to almost the minimum, and you can still make money in five years. But after that you can be replaced. That’s, that’s quite insane. Look, Facebook today, Facebook still has a lot of people. But now you have a lot of young users who are saying that I don’t want to Facebook on something else. So my point is, back in the day, it would take us 25 years to go from point A to point B. Today, maybe it’s going to take us five years to go from point A to point B. So what it means for you, as an individual is that back in the day, you could spend 25 years doing pretty much the same thing. So we’ll see why people will not change jobs, right? Because you could enter at 25 and then leave at 50 the tech would still be the same and maybe we’d be replaced by somebody else right? I mean they something else. But today it means that you have to be ready and prepared and you have to be trained and use what you have, knowledge is just critical, right? But this is why today. If you believe in even if you say Fred is completely wrong, we see that five years which is seven years. My point is it means that during your professional life, you will have to change about at least three to four times.
Matt Zahab
You’ll be ready to adapt.
Frédéric Chesnais
Your job because the technology is going to change. And this is for me. Amazing. Remember my aunt she started the job. Even like my mom, she started a job. She was in kind of programming back in the day but there was a little revolution she saw the first computers arrive and all these things but she did not really change jobs right? That today you have to be everyone listening you have to be ready to change job to have like this very deep evolution every five to seven years and is going to be disturbing because you need are you trained? Do you have the knowledge? Are you ready to move? Are you ready to move not only you but also your family? This is just the reality
Matt Zahab
Now it’s crazy. Well said Fred. Fred, this is a treat man, appreciate you coming on. Excited to see how, I know you were in Qatar and you saw your home country France play, who’s winning the world cup?
Frédéric Chesnais
I think you know it’s the most important is to go to the semifinals after that. It’s everyone’s game. It’s you will see, I’m here because I’m working with a lot of football clubs. And we are working on the virtual worlds for football club. So it should be announced pretty soon back you know streaming content creating your communities, including virtual stadium. But it’s uh, you know, was pretty cool. So we’ll see we’ll see for the World Cup as long as France makes it to the semi final after that.
Matt Zahab
Yeah, gotta have a kick at the can. Fred love it, man. Appreciate you coming on. Where can our listeners find you in AlphaVerse online and on socials?
Frédéric Chesnais
Thank you so much. alphaverse.com and on Twitter it’s @alphaversegame and same on Instagram it’s @alphaversegame.
Matt Zahab
Amazing folks with an episode with Fred from AlphaVerse dropping knowledge bombs left right and center. We absolutely love to see it. If you enjoyed this one. And I hope you did. Please do subscribe. It would mean the world to my team and I speaking of the team love you guys and to our listeners. Thank you as always for listening. Keep on staying healthy, wealthy and happy and keep on growing those bags bye for now and we’ll talk soon.
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