June 11, 2025 • 56 mins
Hunter Stanchek, former Apple and Magic Leap engineer, is building games that simulate thriving on Mars to inspire and train the next generation of space explorers. His company Thrive on Mars creates scientifically accurate, engaging games that teach players about surviving and flourishing in the harsh Martian environment while contributing to humanity's multi-planetary future.
• Stanchek worked at Apple designing products like the Apple Watch before joining AR startup Magic Leap
• The realization that space technology inspires STEM education while providing positive innovations led him to focus on Mars gaming
• Unlike most Mars entertainment focusing on survival and death, Thrive on Mars deliberately emphasizes thriving and building sustainable settlements
• Mission Control is their flagship real-time economic simulation game where players manage Martian resources using scientifically accurate values
• The game economy uses blockchain technology and a cryptocurrency called "Marsha" that serves as the medium of exchange
• Players can purchase Mars technology as NFTs with dynamic pricing based on actual demand in the game economy
• The platform allows for testing new Mars innovations in the game before physical prototyping begins
• Future games include Outpost Surge (turn-based roguelike) and Martian Resident (Unreal Engine 5 game with exploration and base building)
• Gaming will become a recruitment pipeline for the space industry, training future mission controllers and astronauts
• Players can stay updated through thriveonmars.com, Twitter, Discord, and weekly AMAs every Thursday at 2pm
🎧 Listen Now On:
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/going-off-world-moon-mars-venus-and-beyond/id1737881627
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6WjqRL2AZnLWO7Z3DTDjS1?si=d47c055cca1e4df7
Web: https://goingoffworld.buzzsprout.com/
Thank you for joining me on this ongoing journey into the future. Until next time, stay curious, and always think forward.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Going Offworld, your gateway to the
cosmos beyond our Earth.
Join us as we embark on thisjourney together to the Moon,
mars, venus and beyond.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Welcome to Episode 5 of Going Offworld.
I'm your host, Steve Fisher.
Today, we're exploring howgaming can help humanity become
a multi-planetary species withHunter Stanchek, a former Apple
and Magic Leap engineer, who'snow building games that simulate
life on Mars.
As the creator of Thrive onMars, Hunter shares how his
experience designing productslike the Apple Watch changed his
(00:34):
vision for creating engaging,scientifically accurate games
that teach players aboutsurviving and thriving on the
Red Planet.
From real-time economicsimulations to blockchain-based
virtual economies, he'sdeveloping innovative ways to
inspire the next generation ofspace explorers.
Whether you're curious abouthow games can train future
astronauts, what it takes tobuild a sustainable Mars element
(00:56):
, or how blockchain technologyis revolutionizing space
education, you won't want tomiss this fascinating
conversation about theintersection of gaming and space
exploration.
Join us on this journey wherethe sky is not the limit and the
stars are just the beginning.
Hunter welcome.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Great to have you here on the Off-Road Podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
So for those of you who don't know you, I would love
to start with your backgroundand your kind of your journey
how you became interested inspace exploration, gaming, all
the things you're doing, workingon the Apple Watch, a couple
other products, and really gotinspired with design and future
technology, emerging technology,trends, all that stuff.
(01:51):
So I, after about five yearsthere, I moved to Magic Leap,
which is an augmented realitystartup doing sort of spatial
computing technology, and thereason I moved there was I
wanted to just really focus onwhere's tech going and what's
going to be the most positiveway to use technology for
(02:12):
humanity to promote likecreativity and innovation.
And then, after another four orfive years there, I took a step
back and really reassessedwhere tech's going, what would
be the most interesting thing towork on?
I've always been a big gamerand also really interested in
space, and you know I just sawthe Starship, I saw some of the
(02:36):
trends that are happening inspace and how there's all this
amazing technology that's beingdeveloped by various research
institutions or startups, and soI was really inspired by that
and just wanted to find a way touse my skill set to help
accelerate humanity to becomemulti-planetary, and that's
(02:57):
basically, what led me to startwhat I'm doing now?
Speaker 2 (03:02):
What were some pivotal moments during that
journey, that in your careerthat influenced your decision?
Like, really, you talked aboutsome of the education, helping
people, but were some thingsthat really kind of were like I
need to do this.
That kind of drove you that way.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
So I would say the biggest pivotal moment was after
working in augmented realityfor a while and kind of seeing
both the positives and negativesof emerging technology.
And what I mean by that isthere's uh with augmented
reality.
Specifically, there's a lot ofways it can expand human
(03:39):
potential and creativity Uh,it's going to make people uh,
and creativity it's going tomake people basically going to
make people a lot quicker atseeing information in front of
them.
It's going to, you know, helppeople in tons of ways.
It's also more entertaining,it's more interesting.
But the negative is that you'regoing to be a lot more
(04:02):
distracted.
Within all you have a,basically screens that are now
in your field of view, that aredistracting you from the world
around you and taking you awayfrom, I think, what makes being
human so amazing.
So that was a pivotal momentbecause I realized technology is
(04:24):
kind of a reflection ofhumanity and if we look at
social media and we look at theway that people use current
devices, there's also a lot ofnegatives that we have to
acknowledge.
And augmented reality is sort ofan amplification of that of
sort of where we are currently,of that of sort of where we are
(04:51):
currently.
So I started looking at spacebecause it's applying the most
innovative technology.
But if you look at the Apollomissions and some of the earlier
space initiatives, it inspiredyoung people to pursue science,
technology, engineering,mathematics spiked like 300%
when astronauts landed on themoon, which is incredible All
while providing some reallyamazing innovations to the world
(05:14):
.
You know, like developments incamera technology and
developments in, you know, lotsof healthcare.
You know developments inscience, et cetera.
And so I just I think that thatmoment I realized we can get
humanity to to back to the moonand to Mars, it's going to
(05:41):
propel humanity to like sort ofa new chapter and inspire a lot
of young people to want topursue, you know, engineering,
design, science and all of theseother really important things
that can ultimately have like amuch bigger impact on the world.
(06:01):
And so I made the decision towant to spend the rest of my
career focused on that missionand really finding the best ways
to contribute to that.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
That's great.
You mentioned your experiencesworking at Apple and Magic Leap
on the design of those projectsand some like the watch and some
significant projects.
I'm not asking you to break anyNDAs, but lessons learned about
.
I mean, these are two of thebest places for design in the
(06:35):
world.
How did those experiences shapeyou?
Did you take like really soundlessons on, like what you
brought into the design of theorganization and even the
product and the game?
Speaker 3 (06:51):
yeah, totally.
Um.
So I actually joined Apple whenI was 20.
I dropped out of college tojoin, so I was really young and,
um, what I learned, it wasalmost like an extension of
college for me.
It was like my college degreewas working at Apple, kind of.
And so there I was able to bearound basically world-class
(07:15):
designers and engineers, and youknow, I learned things like
lessons like how importantsimplicity is, things like
lessons like how importantsimplicity is.
Uh, there was actually a mottowhen you walked into the design
studio and it just had likesimplify, simplify, simplify,
with two simplifies crossed out.
Um, and that was like kind ofthe motto that we worked on.
(07:37):
You know, you might have to sayno to a thousand before you say
yes, and also it means you haveto kind of explore and really
dive into the details to comeback to the surface with
(08:00):
something that is trulyworld-class and refined.
And those kind of values wereinstilled in me when I worked
there and it was something thatI took forward with me to Magic
Leap, where I started as anengineer but then realized they
really needed a lot of designhelp, and so I used a lot of the
(08:24):
lessons from Apple to start adesign team at Magic Leap.
I was doing prototyping andproduct design and UI design for
the interface, and so yeah, Imean, and then now with the
project where we're buildinggames for Mars, one of the
(08:45):
guiding principles is it has tolook incredible, it has to look
like something you want to goand move to Mars tomorrow.
And I think that's a prettyunique differentiator for us,
because I think a lot of timesit's easy to focus on just the
engineering or just the scienceand forget that real people are
(09:10):
going to be living there andthere's human factors involved
and you know it needs to be aplace that people want to go in
order to change the will ofhumanity, to want to become
multi-planetary.
So you know, those are the kindof the things that have taken
into what we're doing now.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
That's great.
You know one of the things that, as fellow designers, you know
the simplify, simplify, simplify.
You know it's always aboutiteration and further reduction.
I learned one of my previousjobs about MISI Mutually
Exclusive, collectivelyExhaustive.
You know it.
Jobs about MISI, mutuallyexclusive, collectively
exhaustive.
You know it's about.
You know the 10 page PowerPointwith 70 pages in the appendix,
(09:51):
right?
What are the things that peoplereally need to see?
And as a designer, I thinkpersonally I don't know if
you've shared this is that thefriction in a product.
It's the ones that people don'ttalk about are the best
experiences, because it's likeyou either rave or you don't say
(10:13):
anything.
It's the bad ones that everyonetalks about, right?
So if nobody's talking about it, it's probably you've done your
job really well, like in theterms of the interface or the
flow of knowing, of a knowingthe user's experience, and I
don't know.
See how you feel about that.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
I'd love to get your reaction to the the friction oh,
definitely, definitely, um, andit's, it's fun to find how,
like the.
The best way to do that andthat's that's where a lot of the
fun comes for me is is, um, notonly on like a game level,
which I'm sure we can get into,like the games and what we're
(10:53):
doing there, but also, just, youknow, when we're designing some
of the buildings or some of theequipment that lives inside of
the games, um, you know how, howwould we design it in a way
which is approachable, intuitive, uh, but also beautiful?
Speaker 2 (11:13):
that's beautiful.
Yeah, no, I love.
I completely agree.
Uh, you know, design is acreative outlet, all also as
much as an engineering problem.
You know good design, you'reusually solving a problem of
some sort.
Right, it's may not just be adifferent, it's a different
applied engineering in that way.
So let's talk about Thrive onMars, which is kind of a bigger
(11:36):
organization.
What's the mission?
How did that, you know kind ofcome about for you?
How did that you know kind ofcome about for you?
Speaker 3 (11:48):
Where did it start?
Yeah, so it basically startedwith the belief that play can
inspire reality and that's howwe can create the future that of
(12:09):
a multi-planetary humanitylooks like.
And so I would say like ourmission is basically to
galvanize a generation of gamersto help humans thrive on Mars.
I think gamers are basicallysome of the best problem solvers
(12:31):
we have in the world.
I mean, all games are problemsolving in some capacity and if
we can point that talent andthat brain power towards
innovating from Mars, then wehave a real shot at accelerating
humanity to becomemulti-planetary.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
So you know, hearing your talk about multi-planetary
species, which is a consistenttheme I hear from many people in
interviews and I agree I'm inthe same boat.
We need to be that just for ourown fault, the fault tolerance
of humanity Could you share someof the core values and
principles that guide you, morethan multi-planetary species and
(13:13):
training people, but just tokind of go a little deeper into
that.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Yeah.
So I would say one is basicallywe need to create engaging
gameplay that has mass appealbecause there's billions of
gamers worldwide and bringingthem into the science sort of
delicately, so that it's notoverwhelming, but also it starts
(13:53):
to plant ideas in people'sminds about what it is like to
live on Mars.
I think the other thing isexploring.
One of them is like design, ofcourse.
One of them is like design, ofcourse, building a experience
(14:28):
that is world class in terms ofvalues, just trying to play into
the excitement, the fun.
We actually called it Thrive onMars because we found that
almost all entertainment andgaming around Mars has the
(14:48):
perspective of death andsurvival.
It's a lot of it's around hownot to die and, although it's
entertaining, the issue is thatit kind of subconsciously plants
this idea in people's mindsthat it's not a place that you'd
want to go, and so we're tryingto take sort of the opposite
(15:11):
view of what does it look liketo thrive, what are the positive
, optimistic aspects andperspective of what it can be
like to be on another planet?
And so you know that takesshape in terms of storytelling.
It takes shape in terms of youknow how we represent the
(15:31):
artwork, how we represent thegames.
Some of the missions andscenarios are more focused on
exploration and more focused onbase building and, you know,
building your ideal life on thered planet.
But you know we do.
We do need to balance it out alittle bit with some of the
survival mechanics, just becausethat is a reality of of Mars,
(15:56):
but it's more about exploringwith your friends, doing it in a
way where you know you have,you know, enough water, food,
oxygen, et cetera, and you'reable to, you know, successfully
do a mission and keeping itaround.
Basically the exciting elementsof multi-planetary living.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
Sounds, the concept sounds kind of like SimCity and
just lost the other game,Civilization.
Yeah, Like a blend of the, youknow not just straight
turn-based, you know build acivilization but also just
(16:39):
living in it, and interacting.
Definitely.
There was a video game years agoprobably about 15, 16, 20 years
ago now that the the armybrought out.
It was like in the call of dutyand all of them were popular and
it was basically a recruitingtool, using it to teach people,
like, about more than just youknow first person shooter, but
(17:02):
just the squad, how the squadswork, just, and it you know uses
.
It's how you might feel aboutthat, but it's just in terms of
the education level, right.
It's an interesting concept,just for the fact that people
don't know what they could begetting into or what they even
(17:24):
could be doing as a role,because everyone's going to have
a job there.
It's not going to be justleisure doing as a role, because
everyone's going to have a jobthere.
It's not going to be justleisure.
And when I you know think abouthow does it you know we talked
about, like I mentioned,civilization or Sims how does it
simulate real world challengesto living on Mars?
Like what are the things thatkind of do things randomly break
(17:44):
, do things?
You know peril and you knowtypes of challenge come in the
game?
Speaker 3 (17:55):
Yeah, so I'll focus on our first game, which is
Mission Control.
It's a real-time economicsimulation.
So the challenge there is tofigure out how to produce net
positive resources in like alarge scale settlement with
other players.
So you know you're using realMars tech, so the resource
(18:20):
consumption of all of the stuffin the game and the production
is all mapped back to scientificvalues.
Map back to scientific values.
And there's also we hook intothe Mars climate database to
generate hazards which damageitems, break things, and so it
is like you're actually managinga large scale mission control
(18:41):
simulation, but as you're doingit, you're earning achievements,
you're progressing in aspecialty and you're climbing
leaderboards, and then all ofit's blockchain based, so you're
earning cryptocurrency ifyou're doing it in an efficient
way.
So yeah, I mean those are kindof.
Basically, the vision we havewith the real world impacts is
(19:09):
kind of twofold.
The first one is because allthe items are tied back to
scientific values.
We can actually have a pipelinefor new Mars innovation to get
added to the game and tested.
So, for instance, if there's anew solar panel design or a new,
you know, mobile fissionreactor or there's a way to grow
(19:32):
food, that's innovative, we canactually people can submit
those ideas.
We review them in adecentralized way and then
integrate them into the game andsee how they do against other
pieces of Mars technology.
And then the second one is kindof training simulations, so
(19:54):
diving more into specificscenarios where you need to
design a mission plan thateffectively achieves like an
objective, whether it's mining acertain amount of material
using limited resources, orgrowing a settlement to a
(20:14):
certain amount of astronauts,you know, in a limited amount of
time.
Or what if there's a dust stormthat is just consistently
hitting a settlement for threemonths?
How do you survive and build,you know, a thriving outpost in
those conditions?
So we can actually use ourplatform to test all these
(20:36):
things, which is, we believe,will continue to be interesting
for education, for astronauttraining, for potential other
real world training scenarios,and so that's like one aspect of
what we're trying to build.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
That's great this.
You have them all in the Steamplatforms.
Where are they currentlylocated and what's coming so?
Speaker 3 (21:04):
our first game is browser-based, so that one's on
thriveonmarscom.
The second game, which isoutpost search, that one's a
turn-based roguelike deckbuilding game.
Um, that one's coming in closedbeta on steam.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
uh, we could probably send the links out uh, yeah,
I'll put them in the show notes.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
Yeah, that'd be great uh that that will be on steam
as well as uh downloadable onmobile devices.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
So and you know, in our pre-call we were talking
about the, the games there's allon using blockchain.
So there's on-chain andoff-chain games.
Uh, could you explain the kindof differences between them and
the like, the game mechanics, sothat so many people have not
probably tried blockchain gamesyet because it's usually a
(21:52):
little more niche.
So it'd be great to talk aboutit in the context and why you
use blockchain.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
Yeah, so basically blockchain games use
cryptocurrency as a way toreward players for their time
and skill.
So typically with games youjust earn XP or you earn some
sort of leaderboard stats orachievement, but those are, you
(22:24):
know, on Xbox or PlayStationthey don't really have any value
, or PlayStation, they don'treally have any value.
And then the second thing isin-game purchases are different
with between blockchain gamesand other games.
So blockchain games, whenyou're purchasing an item in the
game, that typically comes witha token or a certificate called
(22:46):
an NFT, or a certificate calledan NFT which is transferred to
you and you own it in a wallet,meaning that you can go and sell
it to someone else or anothermarketplace and potentially earn
back the value of that asset,whereas if you were to go play
like Fortnite or Call of Dutyand buy a, you know, a weapon,
(23:11):
skin or something like that inthe game, that money is a sunk
cost that you're not gettingback because there's no way to
really sell that item.
It's attached to your characterin the game but there's no
marketplace.
So what this effectively doesis it gives like all of the
value that is going to the gamestudio back to the players and
(23:36):
that value now is held with theplayers that are actually
investing time into the gamerevolutionized the gaming
industry because it's givingplayers sort of the power, that
of the value that they'recreating the game and, rather
(23:57):
than needing to make money fromjust solely streaming or
youtubing or esports, peoplecould actually make money and
convert the time and the skillthat they have in the game to
real value by just simplyplaying the game and being
skilled at the game.
(24:18):
So we're basically looking atboth of these because, of course
, most of the gamers are stillnot using blockchain technology.
It's very, very soon and veryearly.
Blockchain technology it's very,very soon and very early, but
the the main reason we wanted touse it for the first game was
because it's an economicsimulation game and we found
(24:39):
that with blockchain incentive,people make more realistic
decisions within an economicsimulation, and so the
blockchain element actuallyprovides more useful insight
into decision making.
The second reason we're using itis because it's very expensive
(25:00):
to run a real-time simulation umwith servers and because you're
basically having to update thegame state you know, and process
all of those game decisions onAWS or some series of what are
(25:21):
called smart contracts, whichare essentially just um, you
know bits of code that you candeploy to the blockchain and
basically, the game is runningcompletely on the blockchain,
(25:42):
meaning that the people that umare running the game state and
updating it.
In that game, they're'reearning blockchain tokens for
doing that, which have value,and it's allowing us to not need
to pay the US dollar cost ofhosting large servers and it
(26:04):
also means that the game willjust continue to survive, you
know, forever.
There's no way for us to removeit or delete it, because it's
basically deployed to theblockchain.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
Do people have a local copy.
That way, when it'sdecentralized, they're playing
it locally and they're engagingwith more of the you know how do
they engage with others, likethe decentralized nature of that
.
So just for people listening,so they understand, you know.
You say it can live on becausemost games are like Fortnite
(26:38):
they're on massive data centersat Microsoft, right, they're
just horse energy suckers,horsepower and, like you said, a
lot of it's sunk cost.
So where is how does the modelwork?
I think people would.
I think, once people understand, like the locations and like
what it really means to do, thatit might help get some.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
Yeah, so it's different between blockchain
protocols, but essentially, theway it works for the one that
we're using is there's differentnodes that make up this network
, and these nodes, they'vestaked a certain amount of value
to the blockchain, and that's adollar value of tokens, and
(27:22):
that allows for their node ortheir server to process a
certain amount of transactions,and so it's basically called
distributed proof of stake.
So all of those nodes have aproof of staked value, and they
are running this network in adecentralized way, because what
(27:42):
happens is, if one of thosenodes decides to remove their
stake, another one's rightbehind them wanting to take
their stake, another one's right, you know, behind them wanting
to take those rewards.
So, essentially, they're allearning token rewards for
operating this.
So all of those nodes havelocal copies of the blockchain,
(28:02):
and so they're running it.
But for players playing our game, they're basically just
interacting with the blockchainby broadcasting transactions to
it.
Those transactions can be, uh,something as simple as, um, you
know, transfer my power, like,convert my power into water, or
(28:25):
you know, uh, you know, use thisparticular solar panel to
produce power, like.
These are just, they'rebasically just different
gameplay decisions, and everyoneis broadcasted to the
blockchain.
All of those nodes arebasically running the blockchain
itself.
And then we have another layer,essentially on top of the
(28:45):
blockchain, which we call theMars Operator Program, and these
are people who elect tobasically run nodes that are
specific to our game state, andthey're the ones that are that
are essentially running the gameum by broadcasting transactions
to the blockchain that are likeupdating the game state um in
(29:08):
like a real-time basis.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
So you also.
If I understand, the in-gamecurrency is called Marcia.
Yep.
Yeah, so that's a private tokenon your blockchain, right?
So it's not like you didn't putit out to raise money or do
anything like that, it's justdoes it have with a smart
(29:31):
contract, you can you convert iton the wallet to eth.
It has swappability, sosomebody can, like they have a
mask, they can then take someeth or some bitcoin and buy in
and so you know, kind of movingin and out of the game, right?
If they want to, like you said,if they're a node, they're a
node provider.
They have to pay for the server, like, whatever they're doing,
it helps them and I'm sure inthe transactions, pay for that,
(29:53):
right?
Speaker 3 (29:53):
And I'm curious, you know how that has significance
for the game economy, gameseconomy a medium of exchange in
the game, and so you can convertall of the resources you're
producing in mission control toMarsha and back again.
(30:14):
So it's basically the medium ofexchange for the Mars economy.
We're also using Marsha tocompensate the nodes that are
running the game state, sothere's a portion of it that is
allocated towards those nodes.
Uh, there's a portion of itthat's allocated towards the
(30:35):
game itself and and basicallythe the game rewards for people
who are efficiently managing thetech.
And then marcia is a token thatis on the blockchain, which
allows you to swap in and out ofETH or Bitcoin or whatever
other currency you want to swapin and out of.
(30:57):
So Marsh is the thing thatallows the gamers to go and swap
to other things that they want.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
And the NFTs that are the for those listening that
are not familiar with listening,that not familiar with they're
basically they're non-fungibletokens.
They don't have aexchangeability.
They have a value, uh, but theyare, but they're used to hold a
certain item or a certain,sometimes digital or even
physical asset connection.
So with that, does you haveroyalties on that, as people
(31:29):
would like resell them.
So that way you keeps your gamepay like you.
You you earn if people are.
You know, obviously it helpswith you know dealing with
flippers and things like that.
So do you have any of that inthem?
Speaker 3 (31:42):
yeah, so all of the nfts are representative of mars
tech.
So we have you have one that'slike a bunch of solar panels, we
have one that's a fissionreactor, one that's an
inflatable greenhouse, and so weactually have done something
(32:04):
pretty unique with our NFTs,where you can actually purchase
NFTs inside of the game forMarsha and it's dynamically
priced based on the supply anddemand, meaning that the more
that someone buys a certainpiece of technology, the higher
(32:25):
the price is in our store forthat asset, and then you can
also sell your NFTs back to thestore for store credit, meaning
that you can swap from one pieceof tech to the other.
So this is actually kind of oneof the central ideas with the
game, meaning that we can lookat the most popular pieces of
(32:45):
Mars technology and it's drivenby market demand.
And so this is different thanwhat most other blockchain games
do, which is where they have,like, a fixed price for an NFT
and they typically like dropthem in a you know specific time
(33:06):
and then they either sell outor they don't, and then the
secondary market for these nftson these other games are either
zero or they're extremely high.
Um, and so it's like prohibitiveto basically get into these
games, um, because you mighthave to pay $1,000 just for an
(33:28):
NFT to be able to access thegame.
So what we did is weessentially have these
dynamically priced NFTs, andthen we have different rarities
that go all the way down tovalues where you can basically
play the full game for less thanthe cost of a cup of coffee.
You can basically play the fullgame for less than the cost of
(33:52):
a cup of coffee.
And then there's, you know,much rarer NFTs which give you,
like, full ownership of certainitems within the simulation, so
you can set fees and you can,like have a higher level of
gameplay with those, gameplaywith those.
(34:14):
And so we're basicallyspreading out the ability for
players of kind of all budgetsto be able to experience mission
control.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
That's great.
Related to that, with theproducts and the NFTs, you said
earlier in the conversation thatyou also will get in
suggestions of technology, doyou have a DAO?
For those who don't know what aDAO is, it's a decentralized,
autonomous organization.
So it's the ultimate purist indemocracy in terms of choice.
So letting the community do youlet the community kind of be
(34:43):
part, participate in that aswell?
Speaker 3 (34:45):
Yeah, so we are like pre-DAO, but we do have voting
mechanics and communitydiscussions that influence the
technology.
It's in the roadmap, but thechallenge with DAO sometimes is
(35:09):
you need a good balance ofparticipation and incentives and
you know it's a little bitcomplicated to get that
incentive structure right.
So right now, instead of doinga DAO, we actually are finding
(35:30):
that having a dynamic economy inthe game.
It almost acts like a DAO,where instead of people voting
for a specific proposal in a DAO, they're voting with their
in-game currency and theirresources on what technology
they want to buy more of orproduce more of.
(35:51):
Month.
We're releasing a new featurecalled parts, which are all of
these components that you cancollect by putting resources
into expansion missions and thenyou can craft a specific high
(36:13):
value NFT of your choosing basedon those parts.
So it's essentially like avoting mechanism, but instead of
it being proposals, it'sbasically you're voting with
your in-game resources and whereyou're investing your time and
skill and expanding yourinventory.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
That's pretty brilliant.
I was going to ask you whatinnovative features are coming,
so you definitely thanks foranswering that one.
You know these are not easygames to build.
What have been some of thebiggest technical challenges you
faced while developing it orboth games?
Speaker 3 (36:50):
Yeah, I would say blockchain games are probably at
least an order of magnitudemore complex to build than
regular games, because, I'dagree the the.
The main reason is you can'treally evolve or iterate as
(37:10):
easily because you're you'redealing with a live economy, and
so the most challenging thingwas integrating real tech and
real resource values into theeconomy while we were building
out the game functionality.
And so, for instance, therewere some updates where we
(37:35):
started the game with what wethought were some realistic
values.
We started the game with whatwe thought were some realistic
values, and then we got feedbackfrom planetary geologists and
agricultural experts and peoplewho are well-versed in
environmental control and lifesupport systems, and we had to
(37:55):
make some tweaks and someadjustments to the numbers to
reflect that new data, and thefirst few adjustments were big
enough to make an impact on thevalue of a lot of the NFTs, and
so it was very challenging forus to navigate communicating
(38:17):
that to the players and alsodoing these adjustments, um, you
know, iteratively, and so Iwould say the hardest thing has
just been getting an economythat works, that's dynamic, um,
that's also exciting for playersto participate in, that's.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
That's a great way to kind of cap on that.
And that kind of leads me intohow do you balance the
creativity and the technicalprecision, because it's like you
can make a technically accurateand a very mechanically correct
game, but people have to wantto play it.
(39:00):
It has to be creative andengaging right and and retaining
the.
Uh, how do you?
How do you balance?
How have you been balancingthat?
Speaker 3 (39:11):
So, um, with mission control, I would say we were
overambitious, um, and we went alittle too technical.
So if I were to do it again,I'd probably simplify it a bit
more or at least provide aversion of the game that allows
people to just play it at alittle bit of a more basic level
, because it is, people get veryinto the weeds with the
(39:38):
strategy of it and it peoplethat play, you know more deep
strategy games like eve, online,um, games like that.
So it's, uh, it, basically whatwe?
Um, I think that in the future,like what we're, what we're
gonna do, is a lot of theexperiences that we're building
(40:03):
right now are hooking into thateconomy and hooking into that
mission control experience, butmuch more visually appealing,
much more sort of adrenaline,engaging, exciting, engaging,
exciting.
Like we have Martian Residentcoming, which is a Unreal Engine
(40:23):
5 game where you can drive, youknow, the buggy around, the
rovers around, so you can buildyour own house, you can go on
exploration missions with yourfriends, there's competitions,
but a lot of those missions thatare actually in the game are
being broadcasted by people inmission control.
Um, so it's effectivelyconnecting games together
through a shared economy.
(40:44):
Um, that's cool, which isallowing us to broaden our, our
player base while stillmaintaining the integrity of the
economy, um, and so I thinkthat that's one thing.
The other thing is, like we madea decision with the economy
(41:06):
where, instead of and this ismore of like a in the weeds
thing, but it kind of indifferent notations.
So, like you know, power is inlike kilowatt hours.
Um, food is in, you know, likegrams, or you know some unit
(41:31):
like that, waters andmilliliters, and so it would be
extremely complex for a playerto have to understand all those
units and be able to like seethat in an interface and like
know how everything converts.
So what we did is we basicallytook all those values and then
(41:54):
we removed the notations andjust made them this is power,
this is water, this is food,this is fuel, and all of those
numbers are piped into our game,so people just need to focus on
a specific resource.
That is a lot simpler tounderstand, but all of it's
(42:16):
backed by the actual productionand consumption values based on
the research.
So like it's simplified for thegamers, but it's all still
tying back to the research andit's a one-to-one relationship
there of how we're towing theline, basically between an
(42:40):
overly scientific andengineering-focused experience
that isn't really a game, and afull-on sort of game.
So it's like kind of a middleground that we're achieving.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
So let's put our futures hat on.
You guys have a roadmap.
You guys are building this.
You've been working on this along time.
Let's talk about the future ofspace gaming.
How do you see the intersectionof gaming and space exploration
evolving over, say, the nextdecade?
How do you see that kind ofgoing?
I know you've looked at that,especially for your own roadmap,
(43:17):
of course know you've looked atthat, especially for your own
roadmap, of course, yeah.
Speaker 3 (43:23):
So I think that gaming will be used as a
recruitment pipeline for peopleworking in space.
I think eventually anyone witha laptop can be part of mission
control for any you know planet,any settlement, and we're
training people how to do that.
I also think that gaming can beused in like literal virtual
(43:43):
reality astronaut trainings,where you might need a specific
scenario and you want to trainpeople on that.
So I think gaming will be apipeline for people to get
interested in that and then alsoa pipeline for training and
simulation for you know realastronauts and people actually
(44:05):
in the industry, and so thatthat's like a whole world that I
think needs to be built out andneeds to be world class and
accessible to millions of people, and so you know we'd like to
deliver on that.
The other thing is, I think thata lot of the innovation can
(44:25):
happen iteratively in thedigital world.
That, then, is a pipeline tophysical manufacturing and
product development.
So I think that, with games,it's a cheap and easy way to
test technology without spendingphysical resources on
(44:46):
manufacturing and building, anddoing that in a way where you
can get a lot of the kinksworked out before you actually
move it into physicalprototyping and development out
before you actually move it intophysical prototyping and
development.
So we'd also like to be a hubfor testing and innovation of
early stage ideas and also ideasthat come from unexpected
(45:10):
places, because it's a lot moreaccessible to play a game than
it is to go to an analogsimulation in Utah or whatever.
Play a game than it is to go toan analog simulation in Utah or
whatever, and so like we wantto basically open that up as
well to to the masses.
So, yeah, I mean those are kindof the ways I see basically
(45:34):
gaming as as a front door to thespace industry, because it's
where people are right now.
They're playing games right noware right now they're playing
games right now and if we cancapture their attention with
really compelling gamingexperiences, bring them into
that world slowly, start gettingthem interested in the science,
interested in the engineering.
That is a pipeline for peopleto go into careers in space and
(45:57):
also get like theircertifications and get you know
things that they would need tosucceed yeah, it'll motivate
them because they're gamers now.
Speaker 2 (46:06):
It'll be motivated and the science and the learning
will become secondary, butit'll become the necessary
pathway uh, pathway.
Like.
I wanted to be an astronaut andI did the reversing of okay,
astronauts the commanders areusually test pilots and the test
pilots they probably wentthrough the Naval Academy or the
Air Force Academy likereversing it back out.
(46:28):
So I got all the way throughthe program to commercial, so I
decided to not do that.
But the chances are changed,the things are changing and how
they recruit astronauts and Ithink there'll be more jobs in
space and more ways toparticipate in being a part of
(46:49):
this.
And, to your point, as we go toMars, talking to others, it's a
different journey.
We haven't really gone beyondthe moon, the solar radiation.
(47:10):
We have a lot of things tofigure out, you know, which will
hopefully benefit mankind hereon earth as well.
You know, what advice would yougive a young professional or
young persons who's interestedin kind of combining their
passion for gaming and spaceexploration?
Speaker 3 (47:43):
What would you you're giving the elementary or the
high school talk to the kids,but it's enjoying the gaming
experience and trying to stepback and ask why you like it so
much of stuff down, making alist, kind of thinking through
that.
That's a good starting point onwhat would make sense to do as
(48:05):
a career or as a focus for work,because there's so many
different aspects of it.
Like you know, for me, I loveall of the aspects of character
customization and base buildingand like those things.
I, I, I love it in games likeStarfield and Assassin's Creed,
and you know I'm I'm more, I'mbigger into RPG games.
(48:28):
Um, and so you know that really, when I started this project, I
just wanted to visualize a Marscity like that.
I had an idea in my head oflike this is what I want this to
look like, and I want it to beinteractive and fun and like be
able to see the differentelements and see how they fit
(48:48):
together and like how you cancreate something like really
cool looking so like that waswhat I was excited about.
But you know, if you're reallyexcited about strategy or you
love, you know, the fast paced,competitive elements of you know
, warzone or Fortnite, likethose are things that can be.
(49:12):
Those are like major departmentsin these, in these gaming
studios that are just, you know,focused on these specific areas
.
So yeah, I mean, I think that'swhere I would go is like focus
on what you're passionate aboutwithin, just when you're having
fun.
And then, in terms of the spaceelement, I think, you know,
(49:36):
hopefully playing our gamesinspires people to see what
elements of space that they wantto get involved in and, you
know, I think, ideally, likewhat we're building gets to a
point where we can help peoplesort of identify the career path
that would make the most sensefor them.
(49:56):
That would make the most sensefor them, for instance, using an
in-game achievement system or acertification system to
validate that someone hasexperience operating power
equipment or operating managing,you know, greenhouses within
our games and that has someweight in terms of a resume or
(50:16):
training or certification thatmaybe even they list on LinkedIn
one day.
So like that's kind of maybe acouple of ways to think about it
.
Speaker 2 (50:26):
So I'll do some rapid fires.
We kind of wrap up the show.
One thing I always like to ask,especially for multi-planetary
civilizations since you're goingto Mars, what are the two books
, two pieces of music and twothings you would bring?
Speaker 3 (50:47):
That's a good one.
Two books, well, I think youhave to bring the Hitchhiker's
Guide.
That'd be hilarious, that'sgreat.
And then maybe I don't't knowsomething like dune would be fun
, fun to bring.
I feel like that has a marsvibe to it.
Music I think you have to gowith um one of the classics,
(51:12):
like a mozart or beethoven, andthen something like just off the
wall like Biggie.
Speaker 2 (51:23):
There's definitely a lot of the questions I ask.
I get this juxtaposition ofclassical and hip hop.
It's fairly funny, yeah, andthe things it's like we're not
doing, like you know, naked andafraid, but it's like two things
you would bring with you, youknow, like physical, like you
know things.
Speaker 3 (51:50):
I think, yeah, I mean you, you know like physical,
like you know things.
I think, yeah, I mean I'm veryuh, I'm very interested in the
economy of mars, and so the onething I think would be important
is, like this is not like aspecific thing and it's probably
a little bit too much for thisquestion, but I just I think,
like you need a cryptocurrencyor you need like a
infrastructure on Mars to runthe economy, and I think that
(52:11):
that's a lot different than howwe think about the economy on
Earth, where you have walletsand you have cash and you have
physical currency, and it's alldifferent.
I think you need a unifyingcurrency there, so I'd
definitely bring stuff to dothat.
Um, yeah, I don't know whatelse.
Speaker 2 (52:30):
I mean, it's tough to narrow it down to two, no, it's
totally fine, and that's alwaysthe challenge.
That's the whole point.
Uh, you know, and when you've,uh, the one thing, what's you
know?
You talked a lot about yourcareer and your journey like
what's, what are the one thingyou learned that you wish you
knew when you started.
Speaker 3 (52:50):
Um, that's it's important to like be.
It's important to like reallyfollow what you're passionate
about, and I know a lot ofpeople.
(53:19):
Something that is verymeaningful to you, I think, is I
wish, I wish I had.
I'm very happy and thankful forall of the experience I've had,
but I didn't.
I didn't realize time moves soquickly and every year that
(53:43):
you're not working on sort ofsomething you're super
passionate about, I think it'simportant to do that as early on
as possible.
So, yeah, I think that thatwould be that's important.
Speaker 2 (53:58):
And that does end, kind of the.
The final question, um, like,how do you is?
I'd love to ask the legacyquestion do you know people that
are younger don't even reallymuch think about that, but as
you obviously get older, youthink about you know you have
more years behind you than aheadof you and well, maybe with the
future changes you got a lotmore years.
You'd never know, but you knowhow would you want your work to
(54:18):
be remembered?
What impact do you want to haveon the world then?
Maybe, even maybe, mars, otherworlds as well.
Speaker 3 (54:26):
Yeah, I mean, I definitely I think that I'd love
to have an impact of, ofbasically helping enable future
human civilization on Mars and,um, you know, being one of the,
the people that helps transitioncertain the, the current
(54:48):
culture and will of humanity, uh, from focusing specifically on
earth to focusing on beyondearth, um, and so that
transition point to me is iscritical and also, like that to
me, if I could think about onething to work on, regardless of
(55:10):
if it's the games or if it'ssomething else, it's how can we
help humanity think about andgetting inspired about what it's
like to thrive on Mars?
Speaker 2 (55:25):
That's great.
Well, how can people stayupdated with you?
Where can they find you on theinterwebs and the latest
developments that thrive on Mars?
Speaker 3 (55:35):
Yeah, thriveonmarscom is where all the games are all
the information, and then wehave Twitter.
It's just Thrive on Mars there.
Thrive on Mars is basicallyTwitter, telegram, discord and
Medium, so all of that isprobably the best.
Um discord.
(56:02):
We have amas every thursday at2 pm where you can get updates
from our team directly on um thegames.
And we have, uh outpost surge,which is coming uh, in the next
month.
That's going to be thatturn-based game which will be on
steam, so definitely check outfor that.
And then martian resident,which is the Unreal game that's
coming later this year.
So lots of exciting stuffhappening.
And, yeah, I would say socialsare probably the best place to
(56:26):
keep up to date.
Speaker 2 (56:28):
Great, and we'll definitely have you back when
that launch comes about as well.
So, hunter, thank you for yourtime today.
It's great to have you and lookforward to having you on again
and talk to you soon.
Speaker 3 (56:40):
Yeah, thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (56:42):
Thanks for listening to Going and look forward to
having you on again and talk toyou soon.
Yeah, thank you very much.
Thanks for listening to GoingOff World.
You can find us on all themajor podcast platforms and at
wwwgoingoffworldcom, as well ason YouTube under Going Off World
.
See you next time.
Welcome to Going Offworld, your gateway to the
cosmos beyond our Earth.
Join us as we embark on thisjourney together to the Moon,
mars, venus and beyond.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Welcome to Episode 5 of Going Offworld.
I'm your host, Steve Fisher.
Today, we're exploring howgaming can help humanity become
a multi-planetary species withHunter Stanchek, a former Apple
and Magic Leap engineer, who'snow building games that simulate
life on Mars.
As the creator of Thrive onMars, Hunter shares how his
experience designing productslike the Apple Watch changed his
(00:34):
vision for creating engaging,scientifically accurate games
that teach players aboutsurviving and thriving on the
Red Planet.
From real-time economicsimulations to blockchain-based
virtual economies, he'sdeveloping innovative ways to
inspire the next generation ofspace explorers.
Whether you're curious abouthow games can train future
astronauts, what it takes tobuild a sustainable Mars element
(00:56):
, or how blockchain technologyis revolutionizing space
education, you won't want tomiss this fascinating
conversation about theintersection of gaming and space
exploration.
Join us on this journey wherethe sky is not the limit and the
stars are just the beginning.
Hunter welcome.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Great to have you here on the Off-Road Podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
So for those of you who don't know you, I would love
to start with your backgroundand your kind of your journey
how you became interested inspace exploration, gaming, all
the things you're doing, workingon the Apple Watch, a couple
other products, and really gotinspired with design and future
technology, emerging technology,trends, all that stuff.
(01:51):
So I, after about five yearsthere, I moved to Magic Leap,
which is an augmented realitystartup doing sort of spatial
computing technology, and thereason I moved there was I
wanted to just really focus onwhere's tech going and what's
going to be the most positiveway to use technology for
(02:12):
humanity to promote likecreativity and innovation.
And then, after another four orfive years there, I took a step
back and really reassessedwhere tech's going, what would
be the most interesting thing towork on?
I've always been a big gamerand also really interested in
space, and you know I just sawthe Starship, I saw some of the
(02:36):
trends that are happening inspace and how there's all this
amazing technology that's beingdeveloped by various research
institutions or startups, and soI was really inspired by that
and just wanted to find a way touse my skill set to help
accelerate humanity to becomemulti-planetary, and that's
(02:57):
basically, what led me to startwhat I'm doing now?
Speaker 2 (03:02):
What were some pivotal moments during that
journey, that in your careerthat influenced your decision?
Like, really, you talked aboutsome of the education, helping
people, but were some thingsthat really kind of were like I
need to do this.
That kind of drove you that way.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
So I would say the biggest pivotal moment was after
working in augmented realityfor a while and kind of seeing
both the positives and negativesof emerging technology.
And what I mean by that isthere's uh with augmented
reality.
Specifically, there's a lot ofways it can expand human
(03:39):
potential and creativity Uh,it's going to make people uh,
and creativity it's going tomake people basically going to
make people a lot quicker atseeing information in front of
them.
It's going to, you know, helppeople in tons of ways.
It's also more entertaining,it's more interesting.
But the negative is that you'regoing to be a lot more
(04:02):
distracted.
Within all you have a,basically screens that are now
in your field of view, that aredistracting you from the world
around you and taking you awayfrom, I think, what makes being
human so amazing.
So that was a pivotal momentbecause I realized technology is
(04:24):
kind of a reflection ofhumanity and if we look at
social media and we look at theway that people use current
devices, there's also a lot ofnegatives that we have to
acknowledge.
And augmented reality is sort ofan amplification of that of
sort of where we are currently,of that of sort of where we are
(04:51):
currently.
So I started looking at spacebecause it's applying the most
innovative technology.
But if you look at the Apollomissions and some of the earlier
space initiatives, it inspiredyoung people to pursue science,
technology, engineering,mathematics spiked like 300%
when astronauts landed on themoon, which is incredible All
while providing some reallyamazing innovations to the world
(05:14):
.
You know, like developments incamera technology and
developments in, you know, lotsof healthcare.
You know developments inscience, et cetera.
And so I just I think that thatmoment I realized we can get
humanity to to back to the moonand to Mars, it's going to
(05:41):
propel humanity to like sort ofa new chapter and inspire a lot
of young people to want topursue, you know, engineering,
design, science and all of theseother really important things
that can ultimately have like amuch bigger impact on the world.
(06:01):
And so I made the decision towant to spend the rest of my
career focused on that missionand really finding the best ways
to contribute to that.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
That's great.
You mentioned your experiencesworking at Apple and Magic Leap
on the design of those projectsand some like the watch and some
significant projects.
I'm not asking you to break anyNDAs, but lessons learned about
.
I mean, these are two of thebest places for design in the
(06:35):
world.
How did those experiences shapeyou?
Did you take like really soundlessons on, like what you
brought into the design of theorganization and even the
product and the game?
Speaker 3 (06:51):
yeah, totally.
Um.
So I actually joined Apple whenI was 20.
I dropped out of college tojoin, so I was really young and,
um, what I learned, it wasalmost like an extension of
college for me.
It was like my college degreewas working at Apple, kind of.
And so there I was able to bearound basically world-class
(07:15):
designers and engineers, and youknow, I learned things like
lessons like how importantsimplicity is, things like
lessons like how importantsimplicity is.
Uh, there was actually a mottowhen you walked into the design
studio and it just had likesimplify, simplify, simplify,
with two simplifies crossed out.
Um, and that was like kind ofthe motto that we worked on.
(07:37):
You know, you might have to sayno to a thousand before you say
yes, and also it means you haveto kind of explore and really
dive into the details to comeback to the surface with
(08:00):
something that is trulyworld-class and refined.
And those kind of values wereinstilled in me when I worked
there and it was something thatI took forward with me to Magic
Leap, where I started as anengineer but then realized they
really needed a lot of designhelp, and so I used a lot of the
(08:24):
lessons from Apple to start adesign team at Magic Leap.
I was doing prototyping andproduct design and UI design for
the interface, and so yeah, Imean, and then now with the
project where we're buildinggames for Mars, one of the
(08:45):
guiding principles is it has tolook incredible, it has to look
like something you want to goand move to Mars tomorrow.
And I think that's a prettyunique differentiator for us,
because I think a lot of timesit's easy to focus on just the
engineering or just the scienceand forget that real people are
(09:10):
going to be living there andthere's human factors involved
and you know it needs to be aplace that people want to go in
order to change the will ofhumanity, to want to become
multi-planetary.
So you know, those are the kindof the things that have taken
into what we're doing now.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
That's great.
You know one of the things that, as fellow designers, you know
the simplify, simplify, simplify.
You know it's always aboutiteration and further reduction.
I learned one of my previousjobs about MISI Mutually
Exclusive, collectivelyExhaustive.
You know it.
Jobs about MISI, mutuallyexclusive, collectively
exhaustive.
You know it's about.
You know the 10 page PowerPointwith 70 pages in the appendix,
(09:51):
right?
What are the things that peoplereally need to see?
And as a designer, I thinkpersonally I don't know if
you've shared this is that thefriction in a product.
It's the ones that people don'ttalk about are the best
experiences, because it's likeyou either rave or you don't say
(10:13):
anything.
It's the bad ones that everyonetalks about, right?
So if nobody's talking about it, it's probably you've done your
job really well, like in theterms of the interface or the
flow of knowing, of a knowingthe user's experience, and I
don't know.
See how you feel about that.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
I'd love to get your reaction to the the friction oh,
definitely, definitely, um, andit's, it's fun to find how,
like the.
The best way to do that andthat's that's where a lot of the
fun comes for me is is, um, notonly on like a game level,
which I'm sure we can get into,like the games and what we're
(10:53):
doing there, but also, just, youknow, when we're designing some
of the buildings or some of theequipment that lives inside of
the games, um, you know how, howwould we design it in a way
which is approachable, intuitive, uh, but also beautiful?
Speaker 2 (11:13):
that's beautiful.
Yeah, no, I love.
I completely agree.
Uh, you know, design is acreative outlet, all also as
much as an engineering problem.
You know good design, you'reusually solving a problem of
some sort.
Right, it's may not just be adifferent, it's a different
applied engineering in that way.
So let's talk about Thrive onMars, which is kind of a bigger
(11:36):
organization.
What's the mission?
How did that, you know kind ofcome about for you?
How did that you know kind ofcome about for you?
Speaker 3 (11:48):
Where did it start?
Yeah, so it basically startedwith the belief that play can
inspire reality and that's howwe can create the future that of
(12:09):
a multi-planetary humanitylooks like.
And so I would say like ourmission is basically to
galvanize a generation of gamersto help humans thrive on Mars.
I think gamers are basicallysome of the best problem solvers
(12:31):
we have in the world.
I mean, all games are problemsolving in some capacity and if
we can point that talent andthat brain power towards
innovating from Mars, then wehave a real shot at accelerating
humanity to becomemulti-planetary.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
So you know, hearing your talk about multi-planetary
species, which is a consistenttheme I hear from many people in
interviews and I agree I'm inthe same boat.
We need to be that just for ourown fault, the fault tolerance
of humanity Could you share someof the core values and
principles that guide you, morethan multi-planetary species and
(13:13):
training people, but just tokind of go a little deeper into
that.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Yeah.
So I would say one is basicallywe need to create engaging
gameplay that has mass appealbecause there's billions of
gamers worldwide and bringingthem into the science sort of
delicately, so that it's notoverwhelming, but also it starts
(13:53):
to plant ideas in people'sminds about what it is like to
live on Mars.
I think the other thing isexploring.
One of them is like design, ofcourse.
One of them is like design, ofcourse, building a experience
(14:28):
that is world class in terms ofvalues, just trying to play into
the excitement, the fun.
We actually called it Thrive onMars because we found that
almost all entertainment andgaming around Mars has the
(14:48):
perspective of death andsurvival.
It's a lot of it's around hownot to die and, although it's
entertaining, the issue is thatit kind of subconsciously plants
this idea in people's mindsthat it's not a place that you'd
want to go, and so we're tryingto take sort of the opposite
(15:11):
view of what does it look liketo thrive, what are the positive
, optimistic aspects andperspective of what it can be
like to be on another planet?
And so you know that takesshape in terms of storytelling.
It takes shape in terms of youknow how we represent the
(15:31):
artwork, how we represent thegames.
Some of the missions andscenarios are more focused on
exploration and more focused onbase building and, you know,
building your ideal life on thered planet.
But you know we do.
We do need to balance it out alittle bit with some of the
survival mechanics, just becausethat is a reality of of Mars,
(15:56):
but it's more about exploringwith your friends, doing it in a
way where you know you have,you know, enough water, food,
oxygen, et cetera, and you'reable to, you know, successfully
do a mission and keeping itaround.
Basically the exciting elementsof multi-planetary living.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
Sounds, the concept sounds kind of like SimCity and
just lost the other game,Civilization.
Yeah, Like a blend of the, youknow not just straight
turn-based, you know build acivilization but also just
(16:39):
living in it, and interacting.
Definitely.
There was a video game years agoprobably about 15, 16, 20 years
ago now that the the armybrought out.
It was like in the call of dutyand all of them were popular and
it was basically a recruitingtool, using it to teach people,
like, about more than just youknow first person shooter, but
(17:02):
just the squad, how the squadswork, just, and it you know uses
.
It's how you might feel aboutthat, but it's just in terms of
the education level, right.
It's an interesting concept,just for the fact that people
don't know what they could begetting into or what they even
(17:24):
could be doing as a role,because everyone's going to have
a job there.
It's not going to be justleisure doing as a role, because
everyone's going to have a jobthere.
It's not going to be justleisure.
And when I you know think abouthow does it you know we talked
about, like I mentioned,civilization or Sims how does it
simulate real world challengesto living on Mars?
Like what are the things thatkind of do things randomly break
(17:44):
, do things?
You know peril and you knowtypes of challenge come in the
game?
Speaker 3 (17:55):
Yeah, so I'll focus on our first game, which is
Mission Control.
It's a real-time economicsimulation.
So the challenge there is tofigure out how to produce net
positive resources in like alarge scale settlement with
other players.
So you know you're using realMars tech, so the resource
(18:20):
consumption of all of the stuffin the game and the production
is all mapped back to scientificvalues.
Map back to scientific values.
And there's also we hook intothe Mars climate database to
generate hazards which damageitems, break things, and so it
is like you're actually managinga large scale mission control
(18:41):
simulation, but as you're doingit, you're earning achievements,
you're progressing in aspecialty and you're climbing
leaderboards, and then all ofit's blockchain based, so you're
earning cryptocurrency ifyou're doing it in an efficient
way.
So yeah, I mean those are kindof.
Basically, the vision we havewith the real world impacts is
(19:09):
kind of twofold.
The first one is because allthe items are tied back to
scientific values.
We can actually have a pipelinefor new Mars innovation to get
added to the game and tested.
So, for instance, if there's anew solar panel design or a new,
you know, mobile fissionreactor or there's a way to grow
(19:32):
food, that's innovative, we canactually people can submit
those ideas.
We review them in adecentralized way and then
integrate them into the game andsee how they do against other
pieces of Mars technology.
And then the second one is kindof training simulations, so
(19:54):
diving more into specificscenarios where you need to
design a mission plan thateffectively achieves like an
objective, whether it's mining acertain amount of material
using limited resources, orgrowing a settlement to a
(20:14):
certain amount of astronauts,you know, in a limited amount of
time.
Or what if there's a dust stormthat is just consistently
hitting a settlement for threemonths?
How do you survive and build,you know, a thriving outpost in
those conditions?
So we can actually use ourplatform to test all these
(20:36):
things, which is, we believe,will continue to be interesting
for education, for astronauttraining, for potential other
real world training scenarios,and so that's like one aspect of
what we're trying to build.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
That's great this.
You have them all in the Steamplatforms.
Where are they currentlylocated and what's coming so?
Speaker 3 (21:04):
our first game is browser-based, so that one's on
thriveonmarscom.
The second game, which isoutpost search, that one's a
turn-based roguelike deckbuilding game.
Um, that one's coming in closedbeta on steam.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
uh, we could probably send the links out uh, yeah,
I'll put them in the show notes.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
Yeah, that'd be great uh that that will be on steam
as well as uh downloadable onmobile devices.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
So and you know, in our pre-call we were talking
about the, the games there's allon using blockchain.
So there's on-chain andoff-chain games.
Uh, could you explain the kindof differences between them and
the like, the game mechanics, sothat so many people have not
probably tried blockchain gamesyet because it's usually a
(21:52):
little more niche.
So it'd be great to talk aboutit in the context and why you
use blockchain.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
Yeah, so basically blockchain games use
cryptocurrency as a way toreward players for their time
and skill.
So typically with games youjust earn XP or you earn some
sort of leaderboard stats orachievement, but those are, you
(22:24):
know, on Xbox or PlayStationthey don't really have any value
, or PlayStation, they don'treally have any value.
And then the second thing isin-game purchases are different
with between blockchain gamesand other games.
So blockchain games, whenyou're purchasing an item in the
game, that typically comes witha token or a certificate called
(22:46):
an NFT, or a certificate calledan NFT which is transferred to
you and you own it in a wallet,meaning that you can go and sell
it to someone else or anothermarketplace and potentially earn
back the value of that asset,whereas if you were to go play
like Fortnite or Call of Dutyand buy a, you know, a weapon,
(23:11):
skin or something like that inthe game, that money is a sunk
cost that you're not gettingback because there's no way to
really sell that item.
It's attached to your characterin the game but there's no
marketplace.
So what this effectively doesis it gives like all of the
value that is going to the gamestudio back to the players and
(23:36):
that value now is held with theplayers that are actually
investing time into the gamerevolutionized the gaming
industry because it's givingplayers sort of the power, that
of the value that they'recreating the game and, rather
(23:57):
than needing to make money fromjust solely streaming or
youtubing or esports, peoplecould actually make money and
convert the time and the skillthat they have in the game to
real value by just simplyplaying the game and being
skilled at the game.
(24:18):
So we're basically looking atboth of these because, of course
, most of the gamers are stillnot using blockchain technology.
It's very, very soon and veryearly.
Blockchain technology it's very,very soon and very early, but
the the main reason we wanted touse it for the first game was
because it's an economicsimulation game and we found
(24:39):
that with blockchain incentive,people make more realistic
decisions within an economicsimulation, and so the
blockchain element actuallyprovides more useful insight
into decision making.
The second reason we're using itis because it's very expensive
(25:00):
to run a real-time simulation umwith servers and because you're
basically having to update thegame state you know, and process
all of those game decisions onAWS or some series of what are
(25:21):
called smart contracts, whichare essentially just um, you
know bits of code that you candeploy to the blockchain and
basically, the game is runningcompletely on the blockchain,
(25:42):
meaning that the people that umare running the game state and
updating it.
In that game, they're'reearning blockchain tokens for
doing that, which have value,and it's allowing us to not need
to pay the US dollar cost ofhosting large servers and it
(26:04):
also means that the game willjust continue to survive, you
know, forever.
There's no way for us to removeit or delete it, because it's
basically deployed to theblockchain.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
Do people have a local copy.
That way, when it'sdecentralized, they're playing
it locally and they're engagingwith more of the you know how do
they engage with others, likethe decentralized nature of that
.
So just for people listening,so they understand, you know.
You say it can live on becausemost games are like Fortnite
(26:38):
they're on massive data centersat Microsoft, right, they're
just horse energy suckers,horsepower and, like you said, a
lot of it's sunk cost.
So where is how does the modelwork?
I think people would.
I think, once people understand, like the locations and like
what it really means to do, thatit might help get some.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
Yeah, so it's different between blockchain
protocols, but essentially, theway it works for the one that
we're using is there's differentnodes that make up this network
, and these nodes, they'vestaked a certain amount of value
to the blockchain, and that's adollar value of tokens, and
(27:22):
that allows for their node ortheir server to process a
certain amount of transactions,and so it's basically called
distributed proof of stake.
So all of those nodes have aproof of staked value, and they
are running this network in adecentralized way, because what
(27:42):
happens is, if one of thosenodes decides to remove their
stake, another one's rightbehind them wanting to take
their stake, another one's right, you know, behind them wanting
to take those rewards.
So, essentially, they're allearning token rewards for
operating this.
So all of those nodes havelocal copies of the blockchain,
(28:02):
and so they're running it.
But for players playing our game, they're basically just
interacting with the blockchainby broadcasting transactions to
it.
Those transactions can be, uh,something as simple as, um, you
know, transfer my power, like,convert my power into water, or
(28:25):
you know, uh, you know, use thisparticular solar panel to
produce power, like.
These are just, they'rebasically just different
gameplay decisions, and everyoneis broadcasted to the
blockchain.
All of those nodes arebasically running the blockchain
itself.
And then we have another layer,essentially on top of the
(28:45):
blockchain, which we call theMars Operator Program, and these
are people who elect tobasically run nodes that are
specific to our game state, andthey're the ones that are that
are essentially running the gameum by broadcasting transactions
to the blockchain that are likeupdating the game state um in
(29:08):
like a real-time basis.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
So you also.
If I understand, the in-gamecurrency is called Marcia.
Yep.
Yeah, so that's a private tokenon your blockchain, right?
So it's not like you didn't putit out to raise money or do
anything like that, it's justdoes it have with a smart
(29:31):
contract, you can you convert iton the wallet to eth.
It has swappability, sosomebody can, like they have a
mask, they can then take someeth or some bitcoin and buy in
and so you know, kind of movingin and out of the game, right?
If they want to, like you said,if they're a node, they're a
node provider.
They have to pay for the server, like, whatever they're doing,
it helps them and I'm sure inthe transactions, pay for that,
(29:53):
right?
Speaker 3 (29:53):
And I'm curious, you know how that has significance
for the game economy, gameseconomy a medium of exchange in
the game, and so you can convertall of the resources you're
producing in mission control toMarsha and back again.
(30:14):
So it's basically the medium ofexchange for the Mars economy.
We're also using Marsha tocompensate the nodes that are
running the game state, sothere's a portion of it that is
allocated towards those nodes.
Uh, there's a portion of itthat's allocated towards the
(30:35):
game itself and and basicallythe the game rewards for people
who are efficiently managing thetech.
And then marcia is a token thatis on the blockchain, which
allows you to swap in and out ofETH or Bitcoin or whatever
other currency you want to swapin and out of.
(30:57):
So Marsh is the thing thatallows the gamers to go and swap
to other things that they want.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
And the NFTs that are the for those listening that
are not familiar with listening,that not familiar with they're
basically they're non-fungibletokens.
They don't have aexchangeability.
They have a value, uh, but theyare, but they're used to hold a
certain item or a certain,sometimes digital or even
physical asset connection.
So with that, does you haveroyalties on that, as people
(31:29):
would like resell them.
So that way you keeps your gamepay like you.
You you earn if people are.
You know, obviously it helpswith you know dealing with
flippers and things like that.
So do you have any of that inthem?
Speaker 3 (31:42):
yeah, so all of the nfts are representative of mars
tech.
So we have you have one that'slike a bunch of solar panels, we
have one that's a fissionreactor, one that's an
inflatable greenhouse, and so weactually have done something
(32:04):
pretty unique with our NFTs,where you can actually purchase
NFTs inside of the game forMarsha and it's dynamically
priced based on the supply anddemand, meaning that the more
that someone buys a certainpiece of technology, the higher
(32:25):
the price is in our store forthat asset, and then you can
also sell your NFTs back to thestore for store credit, meaning
that you can swap from one pieceof tech to the other.
So this is actually kind of oneof the central ideas with the
game, meaning that we can lookat the most popular pieces of
(32:45):
Mars technology and it's drivenby market demand.
And so this is different thanwhat most other blockchain games
do, which is where they have,like, a fixed price for an NFT
and they typically like dropthem in a you know specific time
(33:06):
and then they either sell outor they don't, and then the
secondary market for these nftson these other games are either
zero or they're extremely high.
Um, and so it's like prohibitiveto basically get into these
games, um, because you mighthave to pay $1,000 just for an
(33:28):
NFT to be able to access thegame.
So what we did is weessentially have these
dynamically priced NFTs, andthen we have different rarities
that go all the way down tovalues where you can basically
play the full game for less thanthe cost of a cup of coffee.
You can basically play the fullgame for less than the cost of
(33:52):
a cup of coffee.
And then there's, you know,much rarer NFTs which give you,
like, full ownership of certainitems within the simulation, so
you can set fees and you can,like have a higher level of
gameplay with those, gameplaywith those.
(34:14):
And so we're basicallyspreading out the ability for
players of kind of all budgetsto be able to experience mission
control.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
That's great.
Related to that, with theproducts and the NFTs, you said
earlier in the conversation thatyou also will get in
suggestions of technology, doyou have a DAO?
For those who don't know what aDAO is, it's a decentralized,
autonomous organization.
So it's the ultimate purist indemocracy in terms of choice.
So letting the community do youlet the community kind of be
(34:43):
part, participate in that aswell?
Speaker 3 (34:45):
Yeah, so we are like pre-DAO, but we do have voting
mechanics and communitydiscussions that influence the
technology.
It's in the roadmap, but thechallenge with DAO sometimes is
(35:09):
you need a good balance ofparticipation and incentives and
you know it's a little bitcomplicated to get that
incentive structure right.
So right now, instead of doinga DAO, we actually are finding
(35:30):
that having a dynamic economy inthe game.
It almost acts like a DAO,where instead of people voting
for a specific proposal in a DAO, they're voting with their
in-game currency and theirresources on what technology
they want to buy more of orproduce more of.
(35:51):
Month.
We're releasing a new featurecalled parts, which are all of
these components that you cancollect by putting resources
into expansion missions and thenyou can craft a specific high
(36:13):
value NFT of your choosing basedon those parts.
So it's essentially like avoting mechanism, but instead of
it being proposals, it'sbasically you're voting with
your in-game resources and whereyou're investing your time and
skill and expanding yourinventory.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
That's pretty brilliant.
I was going to ask you whatinnovative features are coming,
so you definitely thanks foranswering that one.
You know these are not easygames to build.
What have been some of thebiggest technical challenges you
faced while developing it orboth games?
Speaker 3 (36:50):
Yeah, I would say blockchain games are probably at
least an order of magnitudemore complex to build than
regular games, because, I'dagree the the.
The main reason is you can'treally evolve or iterate as
(37:10):
easily because you're you'redealing with a live economy, and
so the most challenging thingwas integrating real tech and
real resource values into theeconomy while we were building
out the game functionality.
And so, for instance, therewere some updates where we
(37:35):
started the game with what wethought were some realistic
values.
We started the game with whatwe thought were some realistic
values, and then we got feedbackfrom planetary geologists and
agricultural experts and peoplewho are well-versed in
environmental control and lifesupport systems, and we had to
(37:55):
make some tweaks and someadjustments to the numbers to
reflect that new data, and thefirst few adjustments were big
enough to make an impact on thevalue of a lot of the NFTs, and
so it was very challenging forus to navigate communicating
(38:17):
that to the players and alsodoing these adjustments, um, you
know, iteratively, and so Iwould say the hardest thing has
just been getting an economythat works, that's dynamic, um,
that's also exciting for playersto participate in, that's.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
That's a great way to kind of cap on that.
And that kind of leads me intohow do you balance the
creativity and the technicalprecision, because it's like you
can make a technically accurateand a very mechanically correct
game, but people have to wantto play it.
(39:00):
It has to be creative andengaging right and and retaining
the.
Uh, how do you?
How do you balance?
How have you been balancingthat?
Speaker 3 (39:11):
So, um, with mission control, I would say we were
overambitious, um, and we went alittle too technical.
So if I were to do it again,I'd probably simplify it a bit
more or at least provide aversion of the game that allows
people to just play it at alittle bit of a more basic level
, because it is, people get veryinto the weeds with the
(39:38):
strategy of it and it peoplethat play, you know more deep
strategy games like eve, online,um, games like that.
So it's, uh, it, basically whatwe?
Um, I think that in the future,like what we're, what we're
gonna do, is a lot of theexperiences that we're building
(40:03):
right now are hooking into thateconomy and hooking into that
mission control experience, butmuch more visually appealing,
much more sort of adrenaline,engaging, exciting, engaging,
exciting.
Like we have Martian Residentcoming, which is a Unreal Engine
(40:23):
5 game where you can drive, youknow, the buggy around, the
rovers around, so you can buildyour own house, you can go on
exploration missions with yourfriends, there's competitions,
but a lot of those missions thatare actually in the game are
being broadcasted by people inmission control.
Um, so it's effectivelyconnecting games together
through a shared economy.
(40:44):
Um, that's cool, which isallowing us to broaden our, our
player base while stillmaintaining the integrity of the
economy, um, and so I thinkthat that's one thing.
The other thing is, like we madea decision with the economy
(41:06):
where, instead of and this ismore of like a in the weeds
thing, but it kind of indifferent notations.
So, like you know, power is inlike kilowatt hours.
Um, food is in, you know, likegrams, or you know some unit
(41:31):
like that, waters andmilliliters, and so it would be
extremely complex for a playerto have to understand all those
units and be able to like seethat in an interface and like
know how everything converts.
So what we did is we basicallytook all those values and then
(41:54):
we removed the notations andjust made them this is power,
this is water, this is food,this is fuel, and all of those
numbers are piped into our game,so people just need to focus on
a specific resource.
That is a lot simpler tounderstand, but all of it's
(42:16):
backed by the actual productionand consumption values based on
the research.
So like it's simplified for thegamers, but it's all still
tying back to the research andit's a one-to-one relationship
there of how we're towing theline, basically between an
(42:40):
overly scientific andengineering-focused experience
that isn't really a game, and afull-on sort of game.
So it's like kind of a middleground that we're achieving.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
So let's put our futures hat on.
You guys have a roadmap.
You guys are building this.
You've been working on this along time.
Let's talk about the future ofspace gaming.
How do you see the intersectionof gaming and space exploration
evolving over, say, the nextdecade?
How do you see that kind ofgoing?
I know you've looked at that,especially for your own roadmap,
(43:17):
of course know you've looked atthat, especially for your own
roadmap, of course, yeah.
Speaker 3 (43:23):
So I think that gaming will be used as a
recruitment pipeline for peopleworking in space.
I think eventually anyone witha laptop can be part of mission
control for any you know planet,any settlement, and we're
training people how to do that.
I also think that gaming can beused in like literal virtual
(43:43):
reality astronaut trainings,where you might need a specific
scenario and you want to trainpeople on that.
So I think gaming will be apipeline for people to get
interested in that and then alsoa pipeline for training and
simulation for you know realastronauts and people actually
(44:05):
in the industry, and so thatthat's like a whole world that I
think needs to be built out andneeds to be world class and
accessible to millions of people, and so you know we'd like to
deliver on that.
The other thing is, I think thata lot of the innovation can
(44:25):
happen iteratively in thedigital world.
That, then, is a pipeline tophysical manufacturing and
product development.
So I think that, with games,it's a cheap and easy way to
test technology without spendingphysical resources on
(44:46):
manufacturing and building, anddoing that in a way where you
can get a lot of the kinksworked out before you actually
move it into physicalprototyping and development out
before you actually move it intophysical prototyping and
development.
So we'd also like to be a hubfor testing and innovation of
early stage ideas and also ideasthat come from unexpected
(45:10):
places, because it's a lot moreaccessible to play a game than
it is to go to an analogsimulation in Utah or whatever.
Play a game than it is to go toan analog simulation in Utah or
whatever, and so like we wantto basically open that up as
well to to the masses.
So, yeah, I mean those are kindof the ways I see basically
(45:34):
gaming as as a front door to thespace industry, because it's
where people are right now.
They're playing games right noware right now they're playing
games right now and if we cancapture their attention with
really compelling gamingexperiences, bring them into
that world slowly, start gettingthem interested in the science,
interested in the engineering.
That is a pipeline for peopleto go into careers in space and
(45:57):
also get like theircertifications and get you know
things that they would need tosucceed yeah, it'll motivate
them because they're gamers now.
Speaker 2 (46:06):
It'll be motivated and the science and the learning
will become secondary, butit'll become the necessary
pathway uh, pathway.
Like.
I wanted to be an astronaut andI did the reversing of okay,
astronauts the commanders areusually test pilots and the test
pilots they probably wentthrough the Naval Academy or the
Air Force Academy likereversing it back out.
(46:28):
So I got all the way throughthe program to commercial, so I
decided to not do that.
But the chances are changed,the things are changing and how
they recruit astronauts and Ithink there'll be more jobs in
space and more ways toparticipate in being a part of
(46:49):
this.
And, to your point, as we go toMars, talking to others, it's a
different journey.
We haven't really gone beyondthe moon, the solar radiation.
(47:10):
We have a lot of things tofigure out, you know, which will
hopefully benefit mankind hereon earth as well.
You know, what advice would yougive a young professional or
young persons who's interestedin kind of combining their
passion for gaming and spaceexploration?
Speaker 3 (47:43):
What would you you're giving the elementary or the
high school talk to the kids,but it's enjoying the gaming
experience and trying to stepback and ask why you like it so
much of stuff down, making alist, kind of thinking through
that.
That's a good starting point onwhat would make sense to do as
(48:05):
a career or as a focus for work,because there's so many
different aspects of it.
Like you know, for me, I loveall of the aspects of character
customization and base buildingand like those things.
I, I, I love it in games likeStarfield and Assassin's Creed,
and you know I'm I'm more, I'mbigger into RPG games.
(48:28):
Um, and so you know that really, when I started this project, I
just wanted to visualize a Marscity like that.
I had an idea in my head oflike this is what I want this to
look like, and I want it to beinteractive and fun and like be
able to see the differentelements and see how they fit
(48:48):
together and like how you cancreate something like really
cool looking so like that waswhat I was excited about.
But you know, if you're reallyexcited about strategy or you
love, you know, the fast paced,competitive elements of you know
, warzone or Fortnite, likethose are things that can be.
(49:12):
Those are like major departmentsin these, in these gaming
studios that are just, you know,focused on these specific areas
.
So yeah, I mean, I think that'swhere I would go is like focus
on what you're passionate aboutwithin, just when you're having
fun.
And then, in terms of the spaceelement, I think, you know,
(49:36):
hopefully playing our gamesinspires people to see what
elements of space that they wantto get involved in and, you
know, I think, ideally, likewhat we're building gets to a
point where we can help peoplesort of identify the career path
that would make the most sensefor them.
(49:56):
That would make the most sensefor them, for instance, using an
in-game achievement system or acertification system to
validate that someone hasexperience operating power
equipment or operating managing,you know, greenhouses within
our games and that has someweight in terms of a resume or
(50:16):
training or certification thatmaybe even they list on LinkedIn
one day.
So like that's kind of maybe acouple of ways to think about it
.
Speaker 2 (50:26):
So I'll do some rapid fires.
We kind of wrap up the show.
One thing I always like to ask,especially for multi-planetary
civilizations since you're goingto Mars, what are the two books
, two pieces of music and twothings you would bring?
Speaker 3 (50:47):
That's a good one.
Two books, well, I think youhave to bring the Hitchhiker's
Guide.
That'd be hilarious, that'sgreat.
And then maybe I don't't knowsomething like dune would be fun
, fun to bring.
I feel like that has a marsvibe to it.
Music I think you have to gowith um one of the classics,
(51:12):
like a mozart or beethoven, andthen something like just off the
wall like Biggie.
Speaker 2 (51:23):
There's definitely a lot of the questions I ask.
I get this juxtaposition ofclassical and hip hop.
It's fairly funny, yeah, andthe things it's like we're not
doing, like you know, naked andafraid, but it's like two things
you would bring with you, youknow, like physical, like you
know things.
Speaker 3 (51:50):
I think, yeah, I mean you, you know like physical,
like you know things.
I think, yeah, I mean I'm veryuh, I'm very interested in the
economy of mars, and so the onething I think would be important
is, like this is not like aspecific thing and it's probably
a little bit too much for thisquestion, but I just I think,
like you need a cryptocurrencyor you need like a
infrastructure on Mars to runthe economy, and I think that
(52:11):
that's a lot different than howwe think about the economy on
Earth, where you have walletsand you have cash and you have
physical currency, and it's alldifferent.
I think you need a unifyingcurrency there, so I'd
definitely bring stuff to dothat.
Um, yeah, I don't know whatelse.
Speaker 2 (52:30):
I mean, it's tough to narrow it down to two, no, it's
totally fine, and that's alwaysthe challenge.
That's the whole point.
Uh, you know, and when you've,uh, the one thing, what's you
know?
You talked a lot about yourcareer and your journey like
what's, what are the one thingyou learned that you wish you
knew when you started.
Speaker 3 (52:50):
Um, that's it's important to like be.
It's important to like reallyfollow what you're passionate
about, and I know a lot ofpeople.
(53:19):
Something that is verymeaningful to you, I think, is I
wish, I wish I had.
I'm very happy and thankful forall of the experience I've had,
but I didn't.
I didn't realize time moves soquickly and every year that
(53:43):
you're not working on sort ofsomething you're super
passionate about, I think it'simportant to do that as early on
as possible.
So, yeah, I think that thatwould be that's important.
Speaker 2 (53:58):
And that does end, kind of the.
The final question, um, like,how do you is?
I'd love to ask the legacyquestion do you know people that
are younger don't even reallymuch think about that, but as
you obviously get older, youthink about you know you have
more years behind you than aheadof you and well, maybe with the
future changes you got a lotmore years.
You'd never know, but you knowhow would you want your work to
(54:18):
be remembered?
What impact do you want to haveon the world then?
Maybe, even maybe, mars, otherworlds as well.
Speaker 3 (54:26):
Yeah, I mean, I definitely I think that I'd love
to have an impact of, ofbasically helping enable future
human civilization on Mars and,um, you know, being one of the,
the people that helps transitioncertain the, the current
(54:48):
culture and will of humanity, uh, from focusing specifically on
earth to focusing on beyondearth, um, and so that
transition point to me is iscritical and also, like that to
me, if I could think about onething to work on, regardless of
(55:10):
if it's the games or if it'ssomething else, it's how can we
help humanity think about andgetting inspired about what it's
like to thrive on Mars?
Speaker 2 (55:25):
That's great.
Well, how can people stayupdated with you?
Where can they find you on theinterwebs and the latest
developments that thrive on Mars?
Speaker 3 (55:35):
Yeah, thriveonmarscom is where all the games are all
the information, and then wehave Twitter.
It's just Thrive on Mars there.
Thrive on Mars is basicallyTwitter, telegram, discord and
Medium, so all of that isprobably the best.
Um discord.
(56:02):
We have amas every thursday at2 pm where you can get updates
from our team directly on um thegames.
And we have, uh outpost surge,which is coming uh, in the next
month.
That's going to be thatturn-based game which will be on
steam, so definitely check outfor that.
And then martian resident,which is the Unreal game that's
coming later this year.
So lots of exciting stuffhappening.
And, yeah, I would say socialsare probably the best place to
(56:26):
keep up to date.
Speaker 2 (56:28):
Great, and we'll definitely have you back when
that launch comes about as well.
So, hunter, thank you for yourtime today.
It's great to have you and lookforward to having you on again
and talk to you soon.
Speaker 3 (56:40):
Yeah, thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (56:42):
Thanks for listening to Going and look forward to
having you on again and talk toyou soon.
Yeah, thank you very much.
Thanks for listening to GoingOff World.
You can find us on all themajor podcast platforms and at
wwwgoingoffworldcom, as well ason YouTube under Going Off World
.
See you next time.
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