In an exclusive interview with cryptonews.com, Grant Haseley, Executive Director and Founder of Wagyu Games, talks about the future of web3 gaming, the future of 3 sports, and how to craft a web3 community.
About Grant Haseley
Grant Haseley is the Executive Director and Founder of Wagyu Games, creators of Undead Blocks, the world’s first AAA play-to-earn FPS zombie shooter. Grant brings over an unparalleled passion and vision for gamer empowerment and digital asset ownership that relate to his days working in Banking. Grant was most recently a Vice President for M&T Bank, specializing in Data Analytics, and previously worked at Goldman Sachs as an Analyst in their Securities Lending division. Grant graduated with a BS in Mathematics from the University of Buffalo.
Grant Haseley 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
- The partnership with Immutable – and the role the platform played in helping to launch a web3 game like Undead Blocks
- The tokenomics of Undead Blocks and how Grant is striving to make the tokens sustainable as well as giving the tokens a purpose
- The future of Web3 gaming
- How to craft a Web3 community
- The future of esports in Web3
Full Transcript Of The Interview
Matt Zahab
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Cryptonews Podcast. We are buzzing as always and today my guest is coming in hot, not too far away from me in the beautiful, probably colder state than where I live. Good old Buffalo, New York. This lad is a Bills fan. He is a Sabres fan. We love to see it bet your ass we’re going to be getting into that. Today we have Grant Haseley, the Executive Director and Founder of Wagyu Games, the creators of Undead Blocks, the world’s first AAA play to earn FPS zombie shooter that is blowing up as we speak. Grant brings over an unparalleled passion and vision for gamer empowerment and digital asset ownership that relate to his days working in banking. Grant was most recently a VP for M&T Bank specializing in Data Analytics and previously worked at Goldman Sachs. Ever heard of them as an Analyst in their Securities Lending Division. Grant also graduated with a BS in Mathematics from the University of Buffalo. We love to see it. Grant, pumped to have you on. Welcome to show my friend.
Grant Haseley
Matt appreciate you with the intro there. Yes, I would love all of your listeners to know that working in Web3, working in Crypto is a lot more fun than working at a bank. It actually was soul-sucking as fuck. So definitely appreciate the opportunity to be on the pod and I really look up to the content you guys been putting out. So definitely happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
Matt Zahab
What was it like working at a bank again, everyone? I feel like when you’re in Uni, it’s like your parents are always pressuring you. Little Grant, be a doctor, be a lawyer, be a banker. And then it’s like, well, where should little Grant work? Well, Goldman Sachs the big dogs. What was it like working for GS?
Grant Haseley
I mean from my perspective. I looked at my life and said, I’m going to get to do this one time and one time only, and I’m going to call the shots. I didn’t grow up with money. I grew up in a lower to middle class family. I grew up in a little tiny town called Sanborn New York, which is what the first map actually looks like. My cul de sac where I grew up. And so small town kid went big city. I lived in Boston. I was Liberty Mutual. I was in their Actuarial program then I obviously went to Goldman Sachs. I came back, I lived in Los Angeles for a little bit, then I went back to Buffalo. So I’ve been all over the country, and what I learned is life is about who you know, it’s about using what skills you have, leaning into what you’re really good at, and what I’m really good at is just driving change with working in banking is very stiff. I didn’t want to just sit in a corner office for the rest of my life staring at the window, watching coin market cap go up and down. I wanted to make a difference. We saw what was going on with Axie. I figured with my economical experience, just using my math degree, putting it to work for fucking once in my life, I could build a better tokenomic structure. And that’s exactly what we’ve done with Undead Blocks. We’re not shying away from play to earn. I think the market overcorrected itself. Everyone moved away from play to earn. They were just petrified of it after Axie exploded with that ponzi that they were running over there. And from our side, we’re healthy, our ecosystem is thriving, and it’s a lot more fun working in a bank. I say soul-sucking. I don’t take that lightly. Everyone’s very stiff in Web3 and Crypto. You meet a lot of very like minded individuals, people that are here to make a difference, people that believe in financial independence, empowering people to own their own stuff, especially in gaming. So it’s been a blast. I don’t want to do anything else in my life than just build fun games and provide people a way to own their assets. Have fun in gaming, and this is just really a good way for us to get started with Undead Blocks.
Matt Zahab
You sounds like you truly have a passion for gaming. You must have been a gamer since you popped out of the book.
Grant Haseley
Oh, yeah. Well, look at it. You’re from a cold weather climate. I’m from Buffalo, New York. What else is there to do in the wintertime besides watch the Bills, maybe get after the Sabres and then go inside and play video games? I was into COD. I was mostly into COD zombies. That was where the inspo came from for game one. Undead Blocks feels a lot like Call of Duty zombies crossed with Mario Kart if you’ve played either of those titles. And so, really, within undead Blocks, I’m taking a lot of inspo from that franchise. We also picked zombies because Call of Duty is not focusing on the zombies franchise anymore. They’re focusing on this tiny little game called War Zone. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. And it’s unfortunate because there’s millions of zombies players that love knock their own to ten. The old school type of zombie shooter, even just look at zombie culture. HBO is The Last of Us, the Walking Dead, World War Z, Train to Busan, and these zombie related content and entertainment engines, they become Behemoths if you do it right. And that’s exactly the vibe we want to take on. But, yeah, I was getting on the sticks way back in the day before you got canceled for swearing on an Xbox Live chat. I was at headquarters on shipment and, then I went to school and started playing a video game that old people play, which is just watching bank accounts go up and down, working in securities lending. So I feel like I’m going back to my roots. I’ve never been happier and really just excited to bring joy to the world and let full Degens go Degens if they so choose.
Matt Zahab
What was the classic zombie map? I forget the name of it. You definitely know the one with the theater.
Grant Haseley
Kino Der Toten. You circle back and forth and then you went up in the thick.
Matt Zahab
Yeah, you hit the classic you hit the vending machine, you get all the power ups. I remember shooting the shit with the boys. I’d be on, my mum would be yelling at me, matthew, go to bed. And up three 4 hours past my bedtime. Shooting the shit with the boys online off the good old days. So much fun. So let’s go right back into it. Buffalo, actually before we get into Buffalo, your first little rip that you went on, you spoke about sort of resetting the play to earn market. Me personally, I’m a believer that obviously play to earn. I don’t want to say it’s completely gone. There are a few outliers, like Undead Blocks, but similar to anything else in life, once the first little revolution or trend starts people beat the living shit out of it and abuse it. That’s what happened with play to earn. The tokenomic structure for all these big games that were blowing up turned out to be folks. People lost a shitload of money and that’s why I’m more in the yacht and the theme and trend of play and potentially earn. However, again, I’ve listened to your shit. You bring tons of energy and have a very firm stance on this. I’d love if you could go on a little rip in regards to why you and the team still believe the play to earn is here to stay.
Grant Haseley
Well, I think at the end of the day, you have to generate revenue and use it to pay your players. Eventually, if you have no revenue, if you just launch a token, the token is going to go to zero. Nobody talks about what happened with Sky Mavis when they received all of that Ethereum from all those Axies they sold. You guys got to understand, they sold all of those axes in ETH and then they issued SLP. What do they do with the ETH? They’re sitting on it. I see now the Ronin Network is expanding and whatever they’re going to be able to salvage from that reputational risk and that damage that really just took over the entire play to earn industry, it’s because people weren’t earning any money. Now you and your friends can come into Undead Blocks. You can play all day and earn nothing. You’re not going to be guaranteed anything with Undead Blocks. You guys could be the luckiest people on the planet and you could hit the 1000 gold ZBUX box and make $100. That’s cool. You can’t do that in any other video game right now. So we’re really taking we’re leaning in RNG. We’re looking at this and saying if we issue a fixed amount per day that we’ve collateralized, whether that’s through Grants with ImmutableX, Polygon, Polkastarter has pledged money through our tournament program. There’s lots of different ways for us to generate revenue. Cosmetics, we have an IP deal with GameStop where we’re going to be doing GameStop cosmetics that are completely within our ecosystem, hats, t-shirts, jackets, all of this revenue that we can generate from free to play or just letting Degens or NFT traders speculate, we can use that to pay our player base. And whether that’s $1000, $2000, $5,000 a day, you can really write this stuff off as marketing expense. We only raised $1.7 million for Undead Blocks and we did 2.4 million in NFT sale, and from that we’ve been able to create a game and people are earning every single day and they’re loving it. And that’s really the key is you can’t overextend and you can’t over promise you can’t click the mouse to earn. That’s a joke. Like people that come in and say I’m not earning enough on Undead Blocks to pay for my electricity. My answer is this game is not meant to pay for your electricity. If you want to pay for your electricity, go work at the mall or go get a full time job like I did. If you want to play a video game and you want to spend 2 or 3 hours hanging out with the boys playing multiplayer maybe some side action on who’s going to get the first gold ZBUX, pick it up just cool ways. It’s more of a social game that just click to earn. And I don’t think that Web3 games have to be so competitive either, because how human nature works is these people come in, they compete, they try to milk, they min max, and the good players stay and the bad ones leave. Okay, well, how do you continuously find new players? How poker is able to do this with the professionals that come in is, one, there’s different table limits. Like, you can get in at a very low level, and two, there is the RNG. Like, you can be behind in a poker hand and you can still win, and that’s cool. That is the exact kind of vibe that we’re bringing Undead Blocks. You can come in, maybe you’re the best player in the world, but you might not earn shit. You could be the worst player on the planet and get lucky and make $50 that day. And that’s exactly the vibe that we’re going to take, and that’s what we have to do to survive. If I know how much I’m paying out for years, I can cash flow, I can have treasury management, I can use actuarial mathematics to say, okay, how much are we paying out? How much is being reinvested into the game, whether that’s through upgrades or cosmetic purchases, exactly how you operate a Web2 business, we’re just doing it in Web3 at a much smaller scale.
Matt Zahab
Interesting. Wow, you gave me a lot of ammo there. You guys have seemed to figure out a very unique and secret sauce, and that is atracting and retaining Web3 gamers. Again, I’ve been following you guys for a little bit, and you can tell when something’s organic or not again, after you’ve been in the space for a couple of years, I feel like most people’s bullshit radars are getting better and better day by day. And you guys have a legitimate community of people who actually give a shit. It’s not the paid bots from around the world, if you know what I mean. I don’t want to get into it, but you know what I’m talking about. But how did you and the team build that again I know you spoke about the tokenomics and actually giving back, but I feel like there’s more than that. What is the little bit? What are the non obvious things to attracting and retaining Web3 gamers?
Grant Haseley
You’re telling me that you don’t like looking at a tweet where someone says, wow, this project is amazing, or this has 25X potential written all over it. Like they’re just standard bullshit like it’s a joke. And what I understand is how I can speak freely to you. I don’t bullshit people that come into our community. They find out about Undead Blocks they YouTube. There’s an algorithm that you can hit like at anything in life, and it’s how to make money playing a video game. And we’re doing very well at hitting that algorithm. People come in and they say, hey, how do I get started with Undead Blocks? Well, I’m right there. Hey, go buy an NFT. Or you can play for free and you can earn the soft currency and then you can see how the economy works before you come in. Buy an NFT. We only sold 2500 packs that can earn. So these people have to be very realistic with how much they can earn from one of these packs. We can’t overextend ourselves. I think it’s just expectations. And myself personally, it’s whether it’s doing AMAs, like doing these Luke Cough and Rip parties on Fridays on Zombie News Network, which is our Twitch channel. People love free stuff. Nobody’s watching content creators on Twitch anymore that just sit there and play video game because they can go play it themselves. They want to earn free stuff. They want to hang out with others that are like minded. And so we’ve hit this. If there’s a Venn diagram of people that we’re getting in the ecosystem, it’s people that have been playing like DraftKings, FanDuel, they’re doing these poker, they’re doing more of these you can get ahead, but it’s still gambling, let’s be honest call us beta spade. And they come in and say, oh shit, I want to be an Undead Blocks arms dealer and I’m going to play this game for 2 or 3 hours just to cool off and maybe I’ll make $100 today. They love that it’s hitting that I don’t want to call it, like, curse, like the like the dopamine that they’re getting. Like, there’s I’ve branded Undead Blocks as a zombie killing Crypto casino where no one can lose. And it’s true, the only way you can lose is if the value of the NFT goes down. But people can’t come in and lose these games, even that are zero sum game. They’re struggling to retain players because the bots come in or the really good players come in. And then you say, well, I lost money. And people don’t like to lose money, Matt. I’m sure, you know, like, you go to the casino with your boys, everyone’s in a shit mood if the tables aren’t hot.
Matt Zahab
Very true.
Grant Haseley
We’re trying to cultivate a culture where people can either come in, they make nothing, or they make some money. And we’re not guaranteeing anyone to become millionaires. Nothing ridiculous like, oh, this is going 100X like, fuck that. We know our limitations. But what we can do is we can show that this model works, and then we can build a new game, which is exactly what we’re doing, where you’re going to be able to shoot each other. You could also die by the zombies. And if you kill someone, you’re going to be able to drop one of these boxes. If you guys don’t know what I’m talking about, we drop these boxes called ZBUXs, and it’s going to roll just like Mario Kart. And you could earn the asset upgrading currency, or you could earn gold ZBUX, which you could swap for Crypto, Ethereum, BNB, BUSD, anything in our treasury. So that’s what I’m referencing when I say ZBUX and more waves survived equals more ZBUXs dropped. And it keeps people playing. Our average playtime is over three and a half hours. And so if I can captivate someone’s attention for three and a half hours, which is average.
Matt Zahab
That’s your average?
Grant Haseley
Average playtime is three and a half hours. Yeah, because people can’t get enough. They’re saying, okay, I want to do another wave because I want to get five boxes. They’re saying, okay, if I go from wave 25 to 26 now, I get six boxes. And those six boxes, two of them might have dollar, four of them might have nothing. But they love that opportunity to keep going, and that’s why they keep playing and playing. Our average playtime is more than the average time someone watches a hockey or basketball or football game because there’s money to be made. That’s exactly how it goes. People can go on these 12, 13, 14 hours heaters, just like in poker. They won’t get up from the table if they’re hot. You never leave a hot table. We all know this. So that’s the vibe. And so it was a blessing and a curse to do such a small mint size for the NFTs, because I can keep 2500 people very happy and we could run this game for a decade. Obviously, I need more players. So how do I do that? We launch more games and we use this ecosystem we scaled up. We know it works, but we’re not going to overextend ourselves. The problem with Axie was Sky Mavis minted half a million Axies. They said, okay, how do we make half a million people earn money every day. They were getting all the press attention. You saw articles in New York Times. Everyone was just waiting for the shoe to drop. The FUD showed up and then all of a sudden it collapsed. But if the FUD never appeared, they’d be doing the same thing, collecting all that ETH, issuing SLP. And so we have a much smaller community. But they are rabbit, like you said, they’re actual people. They’re in actual parts of the United States, Europe, Latin America, and they care and they love this game. And so we’re going to add more maps, we’re going to add more weapons, more game modes, we’re starting small. Just don’t overextend yourself, Matt. Because if you overextend yourself, it’s really hard to get it back in line. And that’s exactly, It’s like if you’re dating someone and you break the trust of your girlfriend, she’ll never trust you again. We do not want to break these people’s trust. We want them to feel like this is something we can run for decades. And I want that too. I don’t want to go back to fucking banking, please this is a blast. Talking about this, even just being here. Talking about Web3 gaming economy. I was a full Degen my entire life. I played a lot of poker in high school and in college, and I’ve gone Ape on some random bets. That’s how I got into Crypto. Let’s be honest, everyone wanted to get into Crypto and make money. This theme that, oh, I’m just going to empower people to own their assets. If you want to own your assets, go buy real estate. Go buy a property and rent it out. People want to make money here. They want to find something early. They want to feel like they’re early on the tech. That’s why these air drops are super hot. ZK Singh coming up and people want to make money, and we’re giving them an opportunity. We’re doing it sustainably. We’re not overextending ourselves. And my bet is that it’s going to keep exploding like it is. We’ve got a lot of traction, and I’m just excited to see where this goes.
Matt Zahab
Grant, your energy is infectious. You could literally boot the Energizer Bunny out of its job with the kind of buzz you got right now. I want to get into your head for a bit here again, whenever I have a guest on the show, no shit, I have to do my research. You’ve been everywhere. A lot of switched on CEOs and executive directors like yourself, they do obviously jump on the media circuit. You are doing it. It’s obvious. You have to. You’re the face of the game. You got to blow it up. On top of that, though, you’re building every day. You keep growing the team. Walk me through, like, the day to day of Grant. Maybe even mix in some non work related stuff. Walker lift and guy gaming, you know dinner, lunch, fasting. Walk me through a day to day just so that people can get to know you a little bit better and a little caveat and follow up to that. How the heck do you grow the team? Like, how do you find the best game designers? How do you find the marketing team? Walk me through all that shit.
Grant Haseley
I’ll start with the ladder there. It’s really difficult. That’s probably the second most difficult part of my job, behind structuring tokenomics and keeping people happy. Once people start earning money, they say, I want to earn more, right? Like, if you have a rental and you’re playing Undead Blocks and you’re renting out your guns, you want to earn more. You just want to keep feeding the beast. And so that’s curbing those expectations is probably number one, along with the tokenomic structure. But, yeah, finding talented people is tough, and so oh, my right hand man, one of them is his name is Michael Branson. He was an actuary I met at Liberty Mutual in Boston. He loves this shit. He’s a full Degen. Like, he was one of those guys that was using betonline.ag in my bookie because sports betting wasn’t legal in Massachusetts. When we were originally concepting this me and Isaac Nakash, who’s my product director, we were like, how do we just get some people in here that think like NFT people? If you can get people on your team that think like your consumer base, you’re going to be in a really good spot. I brought in Michael, and he helped me structure the tokenomics. In terms of the game developers, we hired a studio. We actually acquired a portion of a gaming studio called NCC Gaming in Vietnam, and now we rebranded them as Wagyu. It was very simple to be like, what have you guys worked on? They worked on some other FPS games in the past. That’s clearly what they’re good at. And we just let them work. We took an engine that they were already building, and we were able to get off the ground that’s why we were able to get the game off to market in a year, you’re going to see other games that struggle for three, four or five years, and they’re on their own development timelines. I don’t know how they’re going to be able to keep their community happy for a decade, but so be it. And that’s really the key also, is we don’t spend a lot on marketing. This is very organic. This is just a chat between two dudes hanging out like, I’m not running Facebook ads. I’m not running YouTube ads, because they don’t work. Like, if you run a Facebook ad right now and you say, hey, come earn $20,000 prize pool in a video game, people don’t believe you. They say, what’s the scam? Or like, hey, you’re going to download malware on my computer?
Matt Zahab
What’s the catch?
Grant Haseley
They actually don’t believe what you’re saying. We’re doing a really good job of attacking these other NFT groups and saying, listen, you own XYZ project. I’m not going to FUD anyone, but you own this project, and they’re doing nothing. Why don’t you come pick up a weapon, load out at Undead Blocks? It’s $100. Maybe you make your money back in two days. If you get the $100 ZBUX and people say, okay, it works. That’s the key. The NFT space is changing consistently. We originally thought we were going to go to play and earn that was going to take over and play to own. You saw some of our competitors buying Super Bowl ads and linking it to their own personal Twitter. Like, there’s been a lot of stuff that’s tried. Now you’re looking at Blur, and we’re in the age of yield farming for Blur, where people are just listing stuff consistently, trying to farm a token. No content creator royalties. Like, things just change on a month to month basis. You have to be glued in like, there are no days off in this industry. I’m not going to advocate for people to work 24/7, but there’s not a day doesn’t go by where I’m looking at my Discord. I’m looking at what’s being said, looking at our engagement on socials and reading comments like, we’ll go on Undead Blocks, we’ll type in YouTube and we’ll see all the content creators for the day. If it’s not in our language, you translate and we see, what do people around the world think about this game? Then we bring it to our designers and we say, can we make it better? That’s why we found out very quickly that people, our community said we’d rather have smaller, stable payouts and not go to sleep sweating if this game is going offline in a year than trying to moon in one month. Because then when you hit that level, it’s very tough to appease. That’s the problem with just being a regular shareholder is, okay, now you have increased expectations. So that’s important. In terms of my day to day, and I know that was kind of a long winded answer, I usually wake up around 9:30. There’s this sort of propaganda that is put out there. I don’t know where it started, but they said that all executives or CEOs have to wake up early. Fuck that. I’m not waking up at four in the morning. Are you kidding me? And they have to have like two or three different shirts, and they have to have everything very small. Like you’re living in a tiny apartment in New York City because you don’t want to clean. You don’t waste your time. I do those activities to get my brain cooking. If I’m in a rut and we need an idea, I’m not going to stare at the computer. And it’s just going to come to me. It’s going to come to me if I’m watching a baseball game or I’m eating breakfast or I’m cleaning or.
Matt Zahab
Moving and grooving, relaxing.
Grant Haseley
Yeah, exactly. When you’re feeling good, that’s when you have your best thoughts. So I usually wake up around 9:30. We have a morning call we do with our devs and designers from ten to eleven. I usually take lunch around twelve. I eat at Chipotle almost every day. I got the email the other day, top 0.5% in my Chipotle, and I actually hooked up my entire local Chipotle with undead Blocks weapon NFTs, and they’re all arms dealers now, so I’m pretty well known in the Chipotle. I haven’t paid for it in a while. Yeah. Oh, they love it. Yeah, because I would literally come in every day like, who the hell is this tall guy? This tall fucker just keeps coming in. I’m 6’7″, and he’s just showing up every day. He’s wearing an Undead Blocks hoodie because usually I do an AMA or something. I just would go to Chipotle, they’d be like, who are you, dude? Like, you’re here every day? And I’m like well, I like your food
Matt Zahab
Grant what’s your chipotle?
Grant Haseley
White rice, pinto beans, chicken. I get extra white rice, mild corn cheese, lettuce chips and guac water cup, and sometimes I fill it up with a Mr. PiBB if no one’s looking. But they don’t give a shit because I don’t pay for my food anyway, so absolutely. And listen, life is to be enjoyed and I love doing this kind of stuff, but there are nights when I’m up till two or three in the morning answering Discord tickets. Like, just working the business development side, like our relationship with GameStop, it took a lot of time to curate and foster. When you’re working with an actual Web2 group, that is the most heavily scrutinized stock in the country, maybe even in the world.
Matt Zahab
The history of stocks.
Grant Haseley
Yeah, exactly. Like, working with their legal team was like, more threatening than meeting my mother in law is just very stressful. So there’s a lot that goes on a daily basis. I probably wake up to 200 Telegram messages. All of them are almost scams. I have to weed out to see if there’s actually somebody that I need to speak to. That’s why I keep my DMs closed on Twitter and Discord. Like, these people are ridiculous with the scams. There’s so many different ways that they can structure it. And like you said, there’s so many ways to now weed out who’s legit, who’s not. The Blockchain gaming lines really helps us with a lot of that. So I do have someone that helps me schedule some of these meetings his name is Kyle Gordon. He’s our business development director. He’s from Kentucky. He’s one wild one electric factory as well. It goes back to how do you find these people? Like, I met Kentucky Kyle at a conference. I knew nothing about this guy, but he just kind of lit up the room. Like, if you think I have energy, this guy’s like a Mountain Dew code red. He lit up the room. We just started talking and I said, listen, you want to work for me? He said, fuck yeah. I’m not doing anything. He was the kind of guy that show up to Crypto conferences and not shield anything. He just wanted to learn about the tech. And so I want to find people that learn about the tech. These people, they are the ones that are going to be doing the Lord’s work for us that go to bad in Twitter spaces every day or are doing Discord. AMAs hanging out in the Discords. Guys in like 470 different Discords says good morning in every one of them. He’s able to really foster some of those connections for us. So you just can’t stop. I mean, I have a social life. I’m a big Bills fan. I’m a big Savers fan. I definitely enjoy going to sporting events, going full Degen at those events. I like playing basketball. I’m your traditional white guy, 30, thought it was going to be in the NBA. Very competitive, and I don’t like to lose. And you can see that in some of the material. When I see posting a flood comment on Undead Blocks, hey, this is going to be stainable. I’m like, call me in three years. I screenshot everything. I’ve got the receipts. I’m ready to lock and load on people. We raised 1.7 million, and we’re running circles around groups that raise 20 30 40 million. They don’t have a clue, they don’t have a vision, and that’s really what I want to do is the key in life is you have to know like if you’re on a team or you’re starting something, you have to know your audience, you have to know your role. I’m not going to sit there and tell my developers, hey, go build the craziest MMRPG ever. Not going to do that. They’re good at FPS. We can give them the ideas. The ZBUX was what made us go viral, where people are literally comparing us to Mario Kart. Hey, instead of just driving around hitting a ZBUX, throwing a turtle shell at your friend, why don’t you just hit the box in our game and potentially earn money? It was the easiest sell ever for people making this game.
Matt Zahab
That’s the RNG aspect.
Grant Haseley
That’s the RNG. People love RNG. They do so that’s a little bit of a day to day. I mean, happy to go in anywhere. I’m sure there’s lots of ammo there, but it’s a fun life. I love what I do.
Matt Zahab
Grant, you are on a freaking roll. Got to take a quick break, though. Got to give a huge shout out to our sponsor, PrimeXBT. The one and only PrimeXBT, who has been sponsors of the Cryptonews Podcast and friends of Cryptonews for a hot minute. We love them as they offer a robust trading system for both beginners and professional traders. It doesn’t matter if you’re a rookie or a vet, you can easily design and customize your layouts and widgets to best fit your trading style. PrimeXBT is also running an exclusive promo for listeners of the Cryptonews Podcast. After making your first deposit, use the promo code CRYPTONEWS50. That is CRYPTONEWS50 on your first deposit to receive 50% of your deposit credited to your trading account. Again, that is CRYPTONEWS50 all in word to receive 50% of your deposit credited to your trading account. And now back to the show with the human electric factory himself Grant. One thing you said there that I always think of, and I’m a Dolphins fan, by the way I don’t even know. Well, long story I’m a Dolphins fan, but we’ll get into that later, after the show. As a Bills fan and as a Dolphins fan, one team kicked the living shit out of us for the last 20 years, and that was the New England Patriots. And one of my favorite quotes, and as an ex athlete myself, Bill Belichick, do your job. The reason why the Pats were so good all the time is because everyone did their job. The special teams goobers did their job. The punters, the kickers, the safeties. everyone on the team did their job so well. And it’s like if you know your role, stick within it. Everything else is going to take care of itself. I always think of that. I always think of Billy.
Grant Haseley
And there’s no egos. No, they know their role, and like you said, they do their job there’s no egos. I don’t have an ego. I can be so upfront and direct and tell you what’s going on in the industry in Web3, gaming and Crypto and NFTs, because I know we got a damn good product. I don’t have to oversell. It’s a fun game to play. You try it, you’re going to say, this is a really cool game.
Matt Zahab
100%.
Grant Haseley
And that’s a good feeling to know. Some people, they got to try to fake until they make it. They try to fake a community. They fake an actual roadmap or a white paper. There’s a lot of LARP. I’m sure you’ve had people on the show you wish you didn’t like two years prior, because you’re like, fuck. I could clearly understand what this person was trying to sell. It’s just very easy for the pros now to identify what’s good, what’s not. You’re even seeing a lot of NFT groups that are just botting their followers. We were hit up by a couple of different groups that could fake Discord conversations, like, actually make it look like people are talking about a game. Like, you go in our Discord, people are nonstop talking. But there are other Discords where it’s literally just Bots talking back and forth, and you can get seduced. It’s like if you’ve had four or five drinks at the bar and you’re looking at a seven, you could easily get seduced in a thing and she’s a nine and a half. Like that’s exactly what’s happening to some of these Discords, especially because everything is anonymous. It’s so scary when it’s anonymous and it’s so powerful because you can do whatever you want. We literally are living in the wild west. There is no safe haven rules in Crypto, Undead Blocks included. Not financial advice, obviously, but you have to try to gravitate towards people who are docs founders who look like they know what they’re doing. I’ve got a couple I’m in a chat with some founders that I really enjoy. Frank, obviously from DLabs. He’s at the homie. My pet hooligan with AMGI. Love those guys. Shrapnel team Deadrops is looking smart, looking strong. We want to be situated where some of these games where they did raise 20, 30, 40 mil, they go off king and then we ride the tailwinds. We didn’t raise that much money. I can’t bring on DrDisRespect. I can’t bring on shroud. What we can do is provide a fun game. So when those people do their jobs and they bring in these players, all those players are going to go to YouTube. Eventually they’re going to say, oh, this is cool, an NFT game. How do I make money playing video games is the algorithm that you need to hit. And people are going to say, come play Undead Blocks, pick up an NFT. You could earn money. It’s not guaranteed, but you have a chance. And that’s all people want, is a chance. People bet on themselves.
Matt Zahab
You just brought up DrDisRespect. For the listeners at home, he’s got to be top three biggest twitch streamers. All he does is he’s this big lad in a wig with the glasses and all he does is rip games 24/7 and stream. Heck, the guy’s probably making a mill or two a month. Great content, too. Has an absolutely massive, huge, loyal audience. It’s this brings us to our next topic, and that is eSports. It is so difficult, at least I feel like it’s so difficult nowadays for a game to really hit critical mass without having that eSports virality aspect. I’m not talking you need to have some sort of face clan team eSports. I’m more talking the whole virality like Call of Duty. How many clips do you see of War Zone or Fortnite? How many viral clips of Fortnite do you see? You see Tyree kill Rip in Fortnite. And then you have these random games that I don’t even really know of, but you have streamers like DrDisRespect or IShowSpeed or Adin Ross or one of these guys play in a game. And then that game blows up just because a streamer played it. What do you think the future of Web3 eSports is going to look like?
Grant Haseley
I think that’s a great question. I think that there’s so many different ways you could unpack this. I think you have to create a fun game before you can force the eSports. I’ll give you a couple of examples. We did $150,000 cash tournament series for the last six months, sponsored by groups like Active World Club, Polkastarter Gaming, ImmutableX. We got the grant from IMX all fully funded. And so the most players we got in one tournament was 6700 about that. So sizable base showing up every day. If we ran in our tournament right now, I’d be confident we’d probably get 10 to 12,000 players. It’s incredibly difficult for a Web2 gamer to download a MetaMask go purchase an NFT to try to compete in something. We have to create games and we have to make sure that the bugs are ironed out and they’re in a good spot to where people say, this is fun. Okay, I’m going to give it a try before we can even think about the eSports. The eSports is what takes games over the top, eSports and streaming absolutely. If people don’t know how to get to your game. Like they’re not going to play the game. And so by running cash prize tournaments or by partnering with large streamers that can showcase the game to their audience, that’s exactly how these indie game studios do it. And that’s exactly what we’re in right now. You want to call it Web3 gaming. This is indie game development. But people owning their stuff and going full Degen on Crypto, tokens and NFTs, it’s exactly what the market in the industry is right now. So from my perspective, it’s my job to make the game as fun as fuck. Because what we are ready to approach some of those streamers, maybe we do an equity raise later on. We bring in two, three, four mil and then we can go throw a million dollars at Shroud and say, hey, can we get seven streams please? And he’s got 25,000 concurrence and maybe we get 5000 of them to try the game and talk about it. That’s how you can get that virality. It very much is in our mind now. Shroud’s not going to play our game if he says this isn’t fun.
Matt Zahab
Exactly.
Grant Haseley
He’s going to say, why am I going to show this shit to my audience and they’re all going to start screaming at me in the chat at one time saying turn it off. It’s like that Trump meme turn them off. The way the lights are too bright.
Matt Zahab
Your ticket into the arena is having a fun as hell game to play.
Grant Haseley
It has to be. I mean, look at the players that are still world record for Mario 64. It’s happening every night. There are hundreds of thousands of people watching streams for people trying to break the record. That game doesn’t have cinematic quality. It’s not AAA game. Same shit. The game was released 24 years ago. Super Smash Bros tournaments, games 30 years old at this point. People love it because it’s got a great gameplay loop and it has replayability and that’s what our game has. So all Zombie games have going full circle. You talk about hanging out with the boys on Kino and it’s wave 55 60 your mom’s yelling, you turn it off. I got to go to sleep. I got to put my face mask on because I got to wake up in the morning, I go to work and you say, no mom, this is the most important thing in my life today. That’s what we have with Undead Blocks. Except you can make money. It’s the same exact thing. Now we need more maps we have one map. Undead Blocks or God of Zombies made map after map. They had Easter egg storylines way to keep people engaged. But you put in that gameplay where people can’t turn it off and they will tell their friends, it’s already happening. We’re going to if you can believe it, we’re going to this thing called the Lobo Gaming Fest in Texas. The gaming commissioner of Texas found our game hit us up, and so now there’s going to be a zombie-killing Crypto casino at a middle school in fucking Texas that we’re presenting this game at. And all those kids are going to tell their friends like, hey Johnny, I’m not going to do that for the podcast voice. But they’re going to say like, hey, why don’t you come try this new game? My dad got me an NFT and I can earn money. That’s literally all you have to say to a kid. And they’re going to say, oh, earn money. This is my allowance. Now all of a sudden, Undead Blocks is paying for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for kids in Texas to play. And that’s where we can provide value is people are spending thousands of hours competing for nothing. Like even Fortnite Cash Cup is for the pros. There’s Rocket League Tournaments that happen every day and you don’t earn anything, but maybe you get a skin. But people love that shit because they love to compete. They don’t want to lose money. So this is a way for them to hit that portion of their brain where they’re competing. They’re not losing money and they’re not getting their feelings hurt if they lose. But now you add that actual factor of liquidity on top of it’s done it’s game over it’s a wrap.
Matt Zahab
Is there a day when COD and FIFA and 2K and NHL and Fortnite, is there a day were these guys wake up? Or as I like to call it, wakey wakey and go, you know what, we make hundreds of millions a year. Maybe let’s give back maybe a couple, maybe half a dollar a day, maybe fifty cents a day if you play our game. Is that ever going to happen? Or they just, they’re like, nah, we’re printed money, we’re good.
Grant Haseley
It’s not going to happen. There’s a couple of reasons why we’ve talked to Microsoft execs. They liked our concept of the game. You’d be surprised who we’ve talked to within just working on Undead Blocks for a year. Like we pitched the mastercard execs. We pitched PepsiCo about doing a flaming hot cheeto flame thrower in our game. We have the GameStop exclusive weapons coming out.
Matt Zahab
How do you get meetings with these guys?
Grant Haseley
Sheer will. Relentless passion. Hit these people up, find their LinkedIn, go to conferences. You build connections with groups like Animoka Brands is one of our largest VC partners. They’re pretty well connected, but it’s sheer will. And then people look at me and they look at me as a so called electric factor. And like, whatever this guy’s fucking building or smoking, I want it. It’s just passion. People get sold they get sold anything. Like, I am no snake oil salesman. We’ve delivered this game faster than anyone in the fucking planet, and we’re offering daily earning. That’s what we promised we would do. We raised the money, and we sold the NFTs. We delivered on that promise. We want to deliver on more promises. But people hear wind of something, and they want to get early. Now, with the Pepsi thing, they’re just not ready to invest in NFTs. They’re not ready to do Crypto. This was when things were starting to pop off in Paris Hilton on a Board Ape on our profile picture. Now, in the US, a lot of people are getting sued for these sort of actions, and so we have to be very careful from our side. And I’m sure the Web2 teams are also very careful on what they can and what they can promote. But to answer to finish the thought, we get pitched all the time on this kind of stuff. And what I can say is the Web2 groups are very much looking, and they want to make money. So a Web2 game studio, they realize that they’ve got a good right now. They don’t want to ruffle feathers. I was quoting Cointelegraph the other day. They asked me, when do you think Epic is going to go full NFT? And I’m like, I don’t think they ever fucking will. When people stop playing Fortnite, they stop minting free money. When they release a Dragon Ball Z skin, they charge $20 a piece and then they sell 100,000 units. They do $2 million in a week. That’s when they’re going to stop. When people say, okay, enough is enough. I don’t need any more skins that I can’t sell, that’s when they’re going to change their behavior. They’re not going to give away five cents, ten cents a day, twenty cents, two bucks, why would they these are greedy. They got bonuses. They have 401Ks to pay. They have benefits packages.
Matt Zahab
They don’t like it.
Grant Haseley
They look at gaming as I mean, they’re hiring psychologists to try to milk and take your money as quickly as they can. That’s why they put the deposit that’s why Caesars has the deposit button in green and the withdrawal button in black, so you can’t find the withdrawal, so you keep your money on their platform. Fortnite was doing the same shit. They got sued that they paid $400 million of gaming commission. They’re fucked. But that’s how they run their business. And so they’re not going to their Ethos is we’re going to make these games as fun and addicting as possible, and we’re going to make you pay for the experience, the entertainment. I’ve said this multiple times. I believe that Web2 gaming is a bravo. You pay for entertainment, and you get fucked. They don’t really care about you. You can get your fun, but it’s going to last 15 minutes. Then you’re going to regret that purchase. You are going to regret that purchase. Web2 gaming is a gaming bravo. You can put that as the headline for this pod. And I’ve said this countless times, and that’s why people stick with me. That’s why I have a community, because I’m not afraid to call out bad act not just in Web3 gaming. I could go on for hours about that, but just Web2. This is why we’re here. These content creators that say, hey, these games have to be crazy cinematic quality. They’re out of their fucking minds. We’re all developing studios of 50 to maybe 75 people. We’re not going to reinvent the wheel. We can do things right, and we can start scaling, and we can start bringing in these players that say, enough is enough. I’m sick and tired of buying all these assets. Whether it’s Candy Crush, Warzone, Fortnite, I’m buying all this stuff i’m getting nothing. What am I getting out of it other than entertainment? Maybe I can get that entertainment, but I can also make some money or at least buy, sell and trade in an open economy. That’s exactly what the problem that Web3 gaming solves. Let’s not oversimplify it.
Matt Zahab
Grant, you’re on a roll. This was truly a treat. A lot of fun. You have an open invite for around two my friend. Before we wrap up, we got to do the hot take factory, and I feel like you might give the hottest takes. We’re 220 episodes in and Grant might give the hottest takes possible here, I could be wrong, but hot take factory, you and I get our shit kicking boots on knee high and we jump right in the factory, let them fly. It’s something that only Grant believes in, whereas most other people do not. It doesn’t have to be Crypto Blockchain Web3 related. It can be health, wealth, happiness, politics, health, nutrition, space, AI, you name it. Give me a couple of Grant hot takes before you go.
Grant Haseley
MrBeast is going to promote a Crypto or NFT project before the end of the year. He’s going to do it. There’s been a lot of talk about it in inner circles. He’s just waiting for the right one. It’s not going to be Undead Blocks. We don’t have enough people. We don’t have money to pay him. Like, we’d have to pay him more money than we’d ever raised yet. He’s going to promote one and that’s what’s going to be the real catalyst, because DrDisRespects doing it. They’re going back and forth. It’s going to be a seven figure deal. It could be eight figure deal.
Matt Zahab
For what? A week’s worth of promo? Not even?
Grant Haseley
To play a game on stream or to a video.
Matt Zahab
Wow. I mean, there’s only a handful of games who can pull that off.
Grant Haseley
Shroud’s another one. I mean, Shroud’s working with Shrapnel. That’s a big one but Beast, yeah, he’s coming.
Matt Zahab
Who’s it going to be?
Grant Haseley
We know how much it costs to get Beast. I wish I could tell you that.
Matt Zahab
I feel like it’s got to be.
Grant Haseley
I wish I could tell you that.
Matt Zahab
I think I know who it is. We’ll chat after the show.
Grant Haseley
For sure. That’s my Web3 hot take. I’ll give you another hot take. I think that people that are they’re anti shilling tokens and they’re anti shilling NFTs, and this is not a shield for Undead token or NFTs. Like, do whatever you want. Not financial advice, but people got into Crypto because they want to make fucking money, fellas. They want to sit here and they want to get that 50X and 100X. Like people talking about just gameplay and cinematography, if you want that, go watch Avatar. That’s a damn good movie. Like for 3 hours of your time you can see some of the best cinematography in the world. It took them twelve years to make that sequel. Go watch that and get out of Crypto. Like, I want people to come and make money. I can’t promise anything, but we need to get back to people’s intentions and a lot of people showed up here to make money and I’m sure a lot of your listeners are very interested in doing that. And that’s why you dig out some of the best projects. I think that people got so fucked by SBF and look, SBF FTX Ventures hit us up. They wanted to raise on us and they wanted us to keep our balance sheet at FTX. If we would have did that, we’d be fucked. I would not be sitting in this chair right now talking to you if we made that mistake in that decision. There are a lot of groups that got impacted by that and I think there’s just been such an entire overcorrection through play to earn, through Web3 gaming, through even just Crypto in general. Look at what’s happening in the United States with the world moving off of the US, the dollars moving off of the world’s reserve currency. And so our elected officials and our politicians are saying ladida like, wow, let’s just keep sending money to Ukraine. We’re funding this war because we’re no longer fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and we have to keep the contracts flowing that we sign off with these top manufacturers, ammunition dealers. And this has taken a wild turn for a hot take. But why do you think we’re funding Ukraine? That’s my personal opinion. And so these people are looking at this tiny issue while we have this massive part of the world that’s literally moving off of the US dollar, and they’re going to start settling things in Yuan, even Saudi Arabia is going to start doing oil deals in different currencies.
Matt Zahab
It’s scary.
Grant Haseley
We’ve got a big fucking problem. I am accumulating as much Bitcoin and Ethereum as I can and that’s my personal take, obviously. Please, this is not financial advice, but we got problems like our country is too busy worrying about social values or social injustice and meanwhile funding Ukraine. And we can’t worry about our own issues at hand, which is we have hyperinflation. The banks are collapsing and they’re cheering it on. Elizabeth Warren today comes out and says. She’s forming an anti-crypto regulatory group. Like, fuck that shit. Why don’t you go talk to the investors at Silicon Valley Bank and ask them why their equity is worth zero? Come on, don’t be a clown. She literally tried to tell people that she was Indian. She’s white. I’m white. Again, not racist, but it’s just true. We’re living in a Dystopian clown show. And that’s the part of, at least from the financial perspective, Crypto can solve is people like minded individuals who agree on most of these topics can come together either anonymously or just having a chat like this. And they can come out and say, Listen, enough is enough. It’s about time we circle together. We protect ourselves. We look out for each other. And that’s really what I want to see more of as we move on through 2023. Give me your hot take.
Matt Zahab
I mean, this isn’t too hot of a take, but you and I are in the same yacht here. I think Chipotle is vastly underrated. Literally. I have one about three to five minute walk away from my house. It’s a cakewalk. How do you not and I don’t even order it to me because I enjoy getting out of the condo when I have a crazy day. If I have half an hour, I’m like, okay, it’s a no brainer. I do a mobile order sometimes I don’t even do a mobile order because I know when you do a mobile order, you don’t get as much. I roll in, i’m the same as you, white rice. I get a scoop of chicken as soon as I get the first scoop of chicken, I go, you know what? I’ll get double. Because if yes for double off the bat, they only three quarter it. And then I go, pico, medium hot, no sour cream, no corn and then guac lettuce, right? I’m off to the races. And the beans, of course, as well. It’s phenomenal. And that’s if fills you up. In Canada, the double meets 22 CAD. It fills you up. I don’t feel like shit after either. I don’t know. I think it’s world class. Could it taste better? Sure, but it still tastes good. Yeah, I don’t have to. I know it’s the best, man. I love it.
Grant Haseley
You don’t have to wash dishes. You don’t need the electricity to run your oven or your natural gas for your stove. People don’t think about this stuff. People think that just cooking at home is yeah, if you’re doing bulk and you’re eating the same thing every day, again, you probably are one of those people that wakes up at 4:30 in the morning or has four shirts and they just circle between those four shirts. And again, please, if there’s anyone here that disagrees with me, this is not financial advice, but if you actually look at the indirect cost allocations of cooking at home, you run the water, then you make your apartment or your house smell. Eventually, over time, that maybe wears down some of the paint. You have the electricity cost, then you have to run the dishwasher. You have to do a lot of these different things, for what time for the same quality. It’s the time. Yeah, you don’t get that time back.
Matt Zahab
If I’m going to eat, cook and clean, I’m looking at an hour and an hour and a half where I can walk to Chipotle, get my bowl, eat and come back in 30, 35 minutes. It’s probably not going to taste as good. I’m probably not going to get as much protein as two fat scoops.
Grant Haseley
You can you get a good walk. It’s exercise.
Matt Zahab
Now I can use that other hour to make money. That’s just how I see it. But hey, I do like cooking sometimes. It’s therapeutic.
Grant Haseley
Look, if you cook with your significant other, I mean, hell yeah, you look like a beast. Things are flowing like you’re going to be a great time. It’s more of a social event when you’re physically cooking by yourself. You’re just make friends. I don’t know. Or just go out and get a breather, get that fresh air. Movement is so important. So many people got cooped up in the pandemic, and that’s, I think, how we got in the situation we have where the world is so divided because everyone just sat alone in their feelings and they weren’t hanging out with their friends on a Friday night, playing Undead Blocks, making money. We need to get back to the more social vibe. Let boys be boys. Let people hang out. Let’s just bring joy and love and spread around the world and just let people have fun doing whatever they want. Let Degen’s go full Degen mike drop I’m done.
Matt Zahab
I love that. Grant, what an episode, man. You truly brought the heat. This was an absolute boatload of fun. Can’t wait to have you on for round two. Before you go, can you please let our listeners know where they can find you and Undead Blocks and Wagyu Games online and on social and actually, that leads me I totally forgot to ask, why the name Wagu Games? I love the name. It’s great, it’s catchy, it’s significant. It has this sort of eliteness to it because, like, Wagyu is for the elite. You know, it’s high quality. But why the name? What was the inspo?
Grant Haseley
It’s a cut above the rest in FPS gaming, of course.
Matt Zahab
But who came up with that? Give me the story behind that. I came up with that.
Grant Haseley
Well, look, I love a good steak. I mean, you live in Canada, but I love going to Texas Roadhouse here in America, hanging out. I grew up in a small town in Sanborn. I love steak, and I just really got my brain sometimes goes off these little tangent. And so in a previous life, I was really like a steak connoisseur. I tried every different kind of beef that was available. I grew up on a farm, was just into it. And just for me, Wagyu always stuck and so I think of Wag, I think of I don’t know. It’s very catchy. It rolls off the tongue. People understand it. It’s like, even with Gala games, people think of going to a Gala as very fancy. So we’re thinking Wagyu is the best sort of cut of beef that you can get, and we really want to be a cut above the rest. So that’s where it came from. And then Undead Blocks was we were thinking, okay, we have the Blockchain, but you also have the ZBUXs, which are like little Mario Kart blocks. And so there are different ways to really have ties in our sequel is going to be called Block Assault. Where it is again, it’s going to be like a 6v6 sort of favela shooter were you’re going to be. People are going and back and forth in houses in the block. So yeah, definitely stay on the tune for that. If you guys want to check us out, all I ask is you just download and play the game. Give me personal feedback, hit me up on Twitter or join our Discord. Go to undeadblocks.com it’s free to play if you have a PC or a Mac we’re also building mobile and we have a browser version. Those should be live in two to three months. So it’s completely free to play. You don’t need to even link your wallet. You can just sign up with a username and password. Definitely want you guys to give it a try and let us know what you think. Let us know what we can make better in the game. We love taking feedback from new players. So appreciate you guys giving a look.
Matt Zahab
Grant, electric episode. Thanks again and can’t wait for round two.
Grant Haseley
Thanks Matt.
Matt Zahab
Folks, what’s an episode with Grant Haseley, Executive Director and Founder of Wagyu Games, Creators of Undead Blocks. That may have been the most electric episode we’ve ever had. The dude is a human electric factory. The gov should probably hire him, help relieve some of the stress on the grid. Huge shout out to Grant for coming on. Huge shout out to his team and my team for making everything work. To the team love you guys. Justas my amazing sound editor appreciate everything you do. To the listeners, if you guys enjoyed this one, please do subscribe it would mean the world. Keep on growing those bags, everyone. Keep on staying healthy, wealthy, and happy. Bye for now and we will talk soon.
Credit: Source link
