October 27, 2023 • 38 mins
In this video we dive into how Web3Wesley grew his YouTube channel to 30k subs in the crypto gaming space, and how he got into crypto and Web3 Gaming through Axie Infinity. We dive deep into content marketing and how to grow an audience rapidly on YouTube.
We also discuss his involvement with WolvesDAO, the leading gaming research DAO in web3. Finally, our conversation takes a detour towards NFT Gaming in Japan and Asia. Wesley throws light on the public sentiment towards NFTs and crypto gaming in these regions while dissecting the dominance of mobile gaming, regulatory challenges, and the growing popularity of the Play-to-Earn model.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Shash (00:01):
Welcome to the Crescendo Go-To-Market podcast.
Today Web3Wesley have , who'smy business partner, but he is
better known for building one ofthe Web 3 Gaming Gaming YouTube
channels to 30,000 subs.
He was involved in Axie in theearly days and he's also the
community manager at WolvesDAO,which is the most exclusive
(00:21):
community in Veptory Gaming.
So, vestley, do you want togive us a quick introduction to
yourself and how you got intoVeptory Gaming?
Wesley (00:29):
Yeah, absolutely so.
As Shash pointed out, I'mWesley.
I have a YouTube channel,web3wesley as well, and we're
working together at Crescendo onthe marketing engagements.
It can also catch me over atWolvesDAO.
But as to how I got into Web3and Web3 Gaming specifically,
it's a bit of a long story.
But I guess we go back to cryptoin general.
I started in late 2014 and Idon't remember how I first heard
(00:53):
about Bitcoin, but I'd heardabout this thing.
You could use spare computerparts and earn money, and that
sounded good to me because I'vealways been a gamer at heart and
you know.
So it's funny because cryptoand Web3 Gaming started with
gaming for me, even though itbegan with using my old gaming
PC, putting all these parts intoa milk crate, and I had this
ugly mining rig in my basementwhere I wasn't paying any
(01:16):
electricity at the time, and itwas right then that mining
Bitcoin kind of becameunprofitable without dedicated
mining units or without biggerpools, and so we actually
switched and me and my buddieswere some of the first people
mining dodgecoin back in the day, which I dumped right away
Otherwise I'd be retired, as Ithink a lot of us have that kind
(01:37):
of story in crypto, but Ishipped it away from crypto.
I wrote my economics thesis onremittance payments and how
Bitcoin was going to change themand how it was going to
revolutionize remittancepayments around the world.
But I stepped into other rolesand I ended up working in not
Bitcoin mining but physical goldmining.
And I did that for a number ofyears working with public
(01:59):
companies, taking companies,public, doing marketing and
operations, and the whole time Iwas keeping an eye on crypto as
a retail investor and 2017-2018, nfts started popping up and I
remember one day someone sent mea deck for a trading card game
and it was a trading card gamethey're gonna use NFTs with.
(02:19):
And I called my buddy and I waslike, whoa, how we use crypto
is gonna change like this isrevolutionary.
And it's funny because theproject died.
It never got off the ground andI was like, okay, so people
aren't too serious about theseNFT things.
And I kind of left it alone andI didn't get too involved with
Ethereum and it wasn't till Axiekind of came around that I
looked at gaming and NFTs again.
I was like, okay, here'ssomething that's actually
(02:41):
picking up.
And then that's when I startedkind of shifting things and
really focusing on the web 3side.
Shash (02:47):
Interesting.
So tell us about the early dayswith Axie, because I think
that's what you're best knownfor.
In those early days, as you gotreally involved, you were
helping a lot of guilds, you hadthese crazy spreadsheets for
reading and so on.
So tell us about the early Axiedays.
Wesley (03:03):
Yeah, I definitely wasn't the first.
You know, I wasn't one of thefirst round of people in Axie,
because Axie started building in2018 before anybody knew about
it.
Where you know, gos often talksabout putting a message in the
discord and waking up in themorning, and it's still the same
message and I wasn't aroundduring those days.
I got in as it sort of startedto get popular.
(03:23):
Before the, there was adocumentary about Axie scholars.
Before that went viral.
I started dipping around withAxie because I noticed in the
crypto space, all of a sudden,there was a bunch of people
talking about this game AxieInfinity, like on Reddit and
stuff.
People in the Philippines wereasking about how to set up
wallets and crypto questions,and I noticed some of this.
(03:44):
I was like, wow, what's all thesudden hype?
That's kind of picking up and Isaw an opportunity there.
I saw that, wow, there'sactually a lot of people that
want to play this game and haveheard about it, and so I started
playing.
I started with a couple axesjust to check it out, you know,
and and I did actually find thegame fun.
I've talked about this before.
(04:04):
A lot of people, I think, gotin only because they wanted to
earn.
But I've been a Pokemon fan mywhole life and I could see some
Pokemon elements in the game andthe earning element was nice on
top.
But I did enjoy the game and soI was in crypto.
I enjoyed the game and Ithought, you know, and here's an
opportunity for this to growinto something.
I saw a lot of potential andthat's really why I kind of
dived in headfirst and thought,you know what, let's try this
(04:26):
breeding thing, let's try thisguild thing.
Shash (04:28):
And it sort of spiraled from there interesting, and
why'd you decide to start makingvideos on Axie?
Wesley (04:36):
so why I just started making videos on Axie.
I've been casually makingvideos for a long time and I've
made this.
I've monetized three YouTubechannels.
They're not as big as this Axieone, this web three, gaming one
, but the other ones got somedecent hyped, I think the first
one.
I was making Call of Dutyvideos 12 years ago and YouTube
(05:00):
offered to monetize my channelpretty fast because I was
getting getting a lot of viewson that.
I'd taken the videos down sincebecause they're they're
horrible.
I go back and look at them, butit was always a hobby of mine
making videos on the side.
When I was in the miningoperation to before I started
working in the office, I didsome work in the field, and part
of that I used to run a drone,and so I used to make.
I was making drone footage, andwhen I started working remotely
(05:23):
, I've always been inphotography, so I had a good
camera as well, and sovideography in general has
always been something that I'vebeen passionate about.
I've worked on a few videoprojects in the past, done a
documentary on beer funny enough, that's a story for another day
and so I called up one of mybuddies one day.
I was like hey, do you think Ican fit crypto content into one
(05:43):
of my other channels?
I was doing some videos aboutJapan and I was like, do you
think I can fit some cryptocontent on here?
Because I know the algorithm onYouTube doesn't like it if I
start mixing and matching.
And you know they supported mytheory that you know what, it's
time to make a new channel justfor crypto related activities.
And that was when I was juststarting to get into Axi, and
the original idea wasn't reallyAxi necessarily, and as I
(06:06):
started thinking about it, I waslike you know what I want the
channel to be about?
Web through gaming but there'sonly Axi.
That's like the only game.
Really, that's any good.
There are a couple in the mix,like Splinterlands has been
around a long time.
I was aware of them but Ihadn't played it.
And there are a few games, butthere weren't much before Axi
blew up, and so it was kind oflike, okay, I need a new channel
to focus on a new topic.
And so I started making I wasalready doing videos and I
(06:29):
thought, you know, let's make adedicated channel for the web
three gaming.
And I called it attack on Axioriginally, and that was a
reference to attack on Titan,just because I'm a big anime fan
, if anyone who watches mychannel as well.
And I was like you know, I likethe, the.
What do you call thatassociation?
No, the grammatic term for itis like a, with the double, the
double letter, and it justsounded good.
(06:50):
I was like you know what,eventually, if I have to rebrand
this to web three Wesley whichI did, but that was always in
the start of my mind but I waslike you know what, let's focus
on Axi, let's dive in, because Iwas doing it right, I was
learning these things and itfelt like an opportunity to help
other people learn as wellthat's very cool.
Shash (07:07):
And why did you decide to kind of pivot from just Axi to
broader web three gaming?
What was the reasoning behindthat?
Wesley (07:14):
yeah, that was always the long-term goal, but when I
started there was only Axireally there was only a few
options for gaming and so Iwanted to keep it in a small
enough niche that I wouldn'thave a new channel again, and so
I thought the web three gaming,the NFT gaming space, just kind
of made sense, and so makingthat pivot was a little bit
(07:35):
difficult, of course, because alot of my initial audience was
interested in Axi specificallyand but a lot of them in general
were also just I.
My channel was built up of alot of like medium and small
guilds, a lot of people thatwere doing something similar to
me and the fact that they werenot necessarily a scholar, but
they were organizing groups ofscholars or they were buying and
(07:55):
selling Axis in large amountsand they were participating
because I didn't really makecontent around how to play the
game.
That's the other thing.
When I started the channel was,I looked at what was out there
and I was like, okay, there's afew channels about.
There were two or three backthen.
One in particular was large,the rest were fairly small, that
(08:15):
we're talking about how to playaxi, and I was like, okay, this
content is covered?
What is not covered?
What have I had to learn fromscratch?
That's been kind of difficult,okay, like learning how to breed
, learning how to set up an ROIcalculator, learning how to
track all these statistics andMake sure that you're not
wasting money, wasting time, etc.
And these were things that majorguilds were doing, and when I
(08:37):
talked to the big guilds, they'dhired someone for this and but
the little guys, themedium-sized guys, you know,
maybe you had 50 scholars, maybeyou had hundreds scholars.
They didn't have tools for thisand a lot of people were losing
focus, wasting money, and so Ithought you know what?
I'm building these tools formyself.
Here's a good niche for me tohelp other people, and I still
get to be passionate aboutcrypto, I still get to be
(08:57):
passionate about gaming, but axiwas the only thing to focus on
at the time.
So the shift was because Ialways wanted to talk about more
than just axi, but there wasn'tany other decent game around
back then to talk about.
Shash (09:09):
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense and I think lately you've
seen a lot more of that.
Three games come out that areinteresting, that are fun.
So, you know, while axi stillgoing strongly strong, this a
lot broader a furnish.
And yeah, I'm kind of curiouswith, also kind of, your
involvement with wolf's down.
So we're both members in wolf'sdown.
I think it's a really greatcommunity.
Can you first give us a quickbreakdown of what the wolves are
(09:31):
about and then how you gotinvolved with them?
Wesley (09:33):
So wolves down?
Yeah, for those of you whodon't know, wolves down is
essentially a collection ofthought leaders in the web
through gaming space.
Now I say a Dow, we call itwolves down, but there's been
some topic this has been a topicinternally that we're not
really a Dow in the sense thatit's not voting on decisions.
(09:54):
There's no token.
It's an application based alphagroup, essentially, and we have
a variety of members fromacross game founders, devs
theses Everything you can thinkof content creators and the
central pillar for everyone isweb through gaming.
This is what brings us together.
This is what we're allpassionate about and we
sometimes call it the only guildyou can't buy your way into
(10:16):
because it's application basedand based on people's merit and
Experience and passion aboutgaming.
We accept them into the Dow andwe do kick people out regularly
.
It's one of the things we'reknown for, not in the sense that
we're harsh about it, but ifsomeone doesn't contribute to
the conversation, which happens,you know, sometimes you join a
guild, etc.
You're too busy and you don'tcontribute, so we do kick people
(10:38):
out because we get a lot ofapplications and we want to
cycle in new members whensomeone's not contributing.
We are 300 membersApproximately.
That number fluctuates a littlebit and we come together and we
talk about everything relatedto web through gaming.
And so how I first got involvedwas Peyton the founder, about a
year and a half ago, and Ijumped on a call with me and
(11:01):
just said hey, watch your videos, like what you're doing in the
space, how'd you like to joinwolves now?
And for me at first I was likeyou know what, I'm not sure I
have enough time to contributebecause it's something I was
worried about.
And he said you know what,don't worry about it, jump in,
try it out, see how it goes andwe'll go from there right.
And so I got a.
(11:21):
He got me some of theapplication, I filled it out,
they they grabbed me in becauseI had already talked to Peyton
and the team and I loved it.
Honestly, the conversations areamazing, like anything to do
with web 3 gaming.
Whether you're a Founder tryingto figure out how to set up
your legal structure, whetheryou're a content creator who
wants to know how to improve itsvideo quality, or whether
(11:42):
you're a D gen and you just wantto know what's the next gaming
NFT that's gonna 100x.
We have all these kind ofconversations in the Dow and
honestly, I just got sucked inand as I got much more involved,
we have a group of Admin thatmake the decisions.
Basically run the Dow based onvolunteer, and so there were
some spots.
Originally I was doing mostlyanalytics work, like how do we
(12:03):
evaluate the games we think areworth looking at and talking
about, and then that expandedinto into community management
as well, where I take a lot ofthe calls and set up a lot of
the Collaborations we do withthe wolf style.
Shash (12:15):
Awesome, yeah, and I mean I agree 100% like wolf style is
probably the purest and one ofthe best communities in that
tree I've seen, just number one.
You can't buy your way in.
There's no product being sold,you know there's issues purely a
place to hang out and Becauseof that I think the conversation
quality is extremely high andyou see some of the top leaders
(12:36):
in the industry there.
It's definitely one of theplaces where this you know, you
keep your ears to the groundthere and you're kind of ahead
of what's happening, and I knowthere are other a lot, I know
there are a lot of otherweb-free gaming communities and
a lot of them are NFT based, butWolfsdale, by far, I think, is
the highest quality.
Wesley (12:53):
Yeah, wolfsdale honestly has become more than just a
group or a Dow.
It's like a family, honestly,there, the friendships I've
established in the Wolfsdale arevery meaningful and it's a very
amazing group of people.
Honestly, it's it's one of theother reasons that I got so
involved with it.
Just, it's an amazing space.
If you haven't checked us out,make sure you check out
(13:15):
Wolfsdale on Twitter and, youknow, fill out that application,
because we love to havelike-minded people in there.
Shash (13:22):
Yeah, absolutely.
And then the other.
The other cool thing I rememberis when we went to token 2049
at Singapore.
We constantly were hanging outwith other wolves and you know
we had.
Basically it was such a greatexperience.
We went to that Chineserestaurant, all of us that just
like ate crab with our heads.
It was a great time, right,like it was like really awesome
(13:43):
just having beers and hangingout as like actually
establishing friendships Did notfeel like a networking event or
anything.
It was just like a crew of, youknow, people who are interested
in similar stuff and we're justall hanging out.
So definitely recommendchecking out Wolfsdale.
And so that brings me to mynext question, right?
So, if Wolfsdale is obviouslyblown up quite a bit, your
(14:04):
YouTube channel also has gottento 30k subs plus.
You've also done a lot of workwith a lot of different gaming
projects, right?
So you know we've workedtogether with Halica, where we
basically did a lot of theircontent marketing, helped, you
know, build out the creatorprogram and really help them get
a lot of game studio leads.
So Could you give us like avery high level.
So yeah, I guess the two-partquestion is how did you blow up
(14:28):
your audience?
And then how can anybody blowup their audience, whether it be
a company or whether it be anindividual who wants to be you
know, that's re gaming kind ofinfluencer?
Wesley (14:38):
Yeah, fair.
So for me a lot of it Goes handin hand with Axie doing well.
Right, I can't discredit thefact that I Started making
content right before Axie gotpopular and mean part of that
not to sound, you know, concededin any way, but part of that
(14:59):
was me making a Bet that Axiewould do well and I could see
the demand was there.
I thought honestly I believe inthe principle of web through
gaming and NFTs and so I thoughtthis is a horse I want to back
and that worked out quite well.
I didn't expect the price whenI started, just in like pricing
terms, when I started makingvideos on Axie, axs was maybe $2
(15:20):
and then it blew up over ahundred dollars and all of a
sudden there are all thesepeople looking for content
around Axie.
So that helps for sure.
And the other thing was reallyfinding the niche that no one
had done right, because, as Isaid, there were a couple videos
about how to play Axie, how tohave the best team and how to
win on the leaderboard, butthere wasn't anyone who was
(15:41):
really teaching you how do youmanage 100 scholars that want to
play this game?
How do you breed your axeswithout losing a bunch of money
and how do you put $10,000 intothis game and make it as safe as
possible so that you're goingto make a profit and you're not
just going to lose this?
You know, 10 grand, right, andI was talking about things like
(16:01):
what are the risks as well.
You know, because I've alwaystried to be rather unbiased.
You know, I told people, ofcourse, crypto itself is very
risky.
This space is very new.
Now we're talking aboutaltcoins, now we're getting even
more risky, and so I have nodelusions that.
You know, these things aren'thugely risky in a lot of senses.
Right, you can see this withAxie having a bridge hack in the
(16:22):
past.
You can see this with peoplelosing seed phrases in crypto,
right, so I was making contentaround that to like safety
principles how do you make, howdo you run all these aspects of
crypto and NFT gaming that noone had talked about yet, right,
because at first, people arejust, they have the gameplay and
they're talking about how doyou make the best team?
(16:43):
Right, like traditional videogame videos, and those are great
.
But I also knew that niche was alittle bit saturated and I kind
of found this niche that no onewas making, and so that's
definitely something you can do,and it's not necessarily
finding a niche that is no one'sin it, because often that's
hard to do.
Sometimes it's just aboutfinding that competitive edge
(17:06):
that no one else is doing,finding a way to make videos and
add value that someone elseisn't doing, and so for me, I
did find a niche that was veryunder saturated, but I also gave
away a lot of tools.
I gave away a lot ofspreadsheets, as you said, that
I was making, and those are oneof the things I got the most
compliments on.
Like, even now, two years later, some people will message me
like, hey, this spreadsheet youmade two years ago, I'm still
(17:28):
using it and I've adapted it fora different NFT, a different
game, because it was just superuseful, and so to me, that
always makes me really happy andthose were the kind of that was
the kind of way I was givingvalue back to the community and,
honestly, people are alwayslooking for an easy way to blow
up on Twitter, youtube, etc.
(17:49):
But for me, some of those toolstook me like the whole week to
make in my spare time, right,and I just gave them away
because I wanted to give valueto the community, and so the one
thing I would say is it can behard work.
You know, starting a YouTubechannel, starting a Twitter
threat Twitter account andbecoming big is very hard to do,
and I often tell people, ifyour goal is to make content
(18:10):
full time and you just want tomake money, you're going to
struggle.
If you find for me, videomaking videos was a hobby, right
, that's how it started and Ireally enjoyed it and I enjoy
making tools like that,spreadsheets like that.
That's why it came easily and Iwas able to put in a lot of
work and give a lot of value topeople without it feeling like a
grind, and so I always tellpeople like, if making a YouTube
(18:32):
video is a grind for you andyou don't enjoy doing it,
there's not a lot of money beinga content creator for most
people, and so I think startingfor the right reason is a big
part of it, and then findingthat niche that you can really
succeed in is another part.
Finding a way to give valuethat is missing to a certain
niche or to a certain communitywill get you a very long way.
Shash (18:53):
Yeah, I agree 100 percent , and I think that's one of the
most important pieces thatpeople miss is if you're trying
to do something that you knowthere's an niche that is
competitive, the only way youcan get ahead in a niche that's
competitive is by beingabsolutely obsessive and like
creating something that'sridiculous, right.
So at that point you're doinglike 10 X the effort and I have
(19:14):
seen friends do that right andsucceed and like niches that are
competitive.
I recently had a friend of mine, tim.
He basically made a programming, like he started a new YouTube
channel and there was a video heworked on for like months on
how he learned programming andgot a job with it in six months
and it blew up Blue reallythinks God, over a million views
or whatever, and he's reallyblown up in that way.
(19:34):
But that also, like with thatcompetitive niche is like
requires a massive amount ofeffort, right.
That literally took like monthsand months and, like you know,
maybe like a thousand hours ofwork.
So it's like you can I do thinkthat, like what she did, there
was, you know, essentially finda niche that was growing right
and then create content andprovide tools that nobody else
(19:54):
was doing.
So there was a lot ofdifferentiation, and I think
that's probably like the smarterway to go about it is in terms
of just being able to get likethe maximum ROI.
And I did something similarwith my first YouTube channel,
which was a YouTube advertisingchannel.
I didn't really blow it up tocrazy numbers, but I got to like
10 K subs and that was mostlythrough just you know, basically
(20:15):
finding a niche that nobody wastalking about, youtube ads and
essentially building authorityand writing a lot of content
building agency around it, andthat was a great way to grow
that business and our.
You know, we're getting leadsthrough content, right.
So I do think that really beingable to think from post
principles and thinking that,hey, am I just competing with a
million other people who aredoing this, or do I have a
(20:36):
unique angle?
Do I have a unique niche?
And even if the niche isn'tunique, am I approaching it in a
way that's fresh and can allowme to like succeed?
So I absolutely agreed on that.
Now, one thing that I'm alsoreally curious about is you are
based in Japan, right, and Japanis obviously pretty big in the
gaming space and the vectorgaming space.
(20:58):
I'm curious how Japanese gamersview vector gaming.
What's the feeling like on theground there?
And yeah, I would love to diveinto that as well.
Wesley (21:09):
Yeah, I would start off by saying it's not as negative
the sentiment as it is in theWest.
Gamers in the West hate NFTs,and you can see this from any of
the big gaming magazines.
Whenever they write any kind ofarticle, they're tailoring to
their audience that despisescrypto, nfts.
But it's not so much so in theWest, and I think it's hard to
(21:34):
speculate on why.
But I have a few theories.
One of them is in Japan and inAsia in general, mobile gaming
is very big.
It tends to be the PC gamersthat are more opposed to crypto
and NFT.
They're a lot more hardcore.
The mobile game scene is muchmore casual.
People don't have such strongopinions, and you can see this
in your communities too.
Like FPS communities can befricking toxic as hell, but you
(21:58):
very rarely get a hyper casualgaming community that's very
toxic and very, you know, hasvery strong opinions one way or
the other as well.
So that's part of it.
And the other thing is I thinkthere's been less exposure to
crypto in Japan in general, sothere's been less people have
been less exposed to some of thehacks and scams that we've seen
more in the West.
(22:19):
Part of that is to do withregulations, crypto regulations.
The government has been sayingthat they're going to make
things better in Japan, but taxregulations are pretty harsh on
crypto.
It's often Delta's incomeinstead of capital gains, which
just means that a lot of peopledon't want to touch it, and so
there's less knowledge, lessexperience about NFTs, which can
(22:41):
be a good thing.
We can also be a bad thing, butI do think it helps with the
whole sentiment.
There's less negativeconnotations with NFTs here in
the West and we'll see likemobile gaming is big, even
though PC gaming is been risingyear over year, it's not nearly
as prominent, neither as console, as it is in Canada, america
(23:02):
and a lot of Europe as well.
So definitely a more positivesentiment overall, honestly, but
I wouldn't say they're, Iwouldn't say they're overly like
super bullish on NFTs andgaming.
I think there's just a lot lessawareness around it.
Shash (23:16):
Interesting.
And what about the rest of Asia, like Korea, philippines,
vietnam?
Wesley (23:24):
Yeah, I mean Philippines of Vietnam.
Southeast Asia has had exposureon the play to earn side a lot,
especially with Axie being alarge, large proportion of the
players being in the Philippines.
So there's been I think there'sdefinitely been some bridges
burned because tokens have dived, but overall it does seem like
(23:46):
when I talk to these regionsthey're still very bullish on
crypto because they like thisplay to earn, they like the idea
of playing video games andearning money, and even when
it's only a little bit of moneyin a country where that, you
know, 10 cents US goes a lotfarther that still can be quite
profitable right, even whentheir token prices are quite
lower.
Because I think, you know, whenwe have low token prices,
(24:08):
you're only earning a coupledollars a day on some of these
games.
You know, if you're in theStates, you know you can't even
buy a meal, but in some of thecheaper places in the world in
terms of like purchasing power,it goes a lot further right, and
so people tend to be play thesegames a lot more.
I still think when I talk topeople, like when you talk to
Web3 Game Studios, a lot oftheir audience is still coming
(24:29):
out of Asian countries likeVietnam, like the Philippines.
Ladam is picking up, for sure,countries like that, but that
has to do more with the earningside of things.
The other thing is these arealso countries that are heavy
into mobile.
Asia in general like is just alot more mobile heavy.
The Philippines.
People have cell phones, smartphones readily available, with
(24:52):
internet readily available, butnot many of them have a gaming
PC or a gaming console, forexample, and so there's that's
definitely a big factor in it aswell.
Shash (25:02):
Got it, got it.
And you know you just mentioned, obviously, like a lot of the
Southeast Asian gamers, like the, you know Play Door and
actually you know even a coupleof dollars a day works for them.
But what is your opinion on,like, the economics of Play Door
and do you think there's a wayto make it sustainable?
Or is Play Door an as a conceptflawed?
Or yeah, what's your opinionaround the tokenomics slash
(25:27):
viability of a model like PlayDoor?
Wesley (25:31):
So it's tough to answer that, because Play Door means a
little, means something a littledifferent to everyone, right?
In general, I would say PlayDoor is not dead.
I think it's okay.
It's just a matter of and I hadthis conversation on Twitter
space the other day about bigtime and someone was talking
about how big time is pay toplay.
(25:53):
You have to buy a bunch of NFTsand stuff to play the game in an
earning sense, and to me, aslong as the pay is higher than
the earn earn, you can have abalance.
Right, you have to have somepeople that are willing to pay
money to save time, and then youcan have people that are
willing to spend time to earnmoney.
(26:14):
Right, people can grind in adungeon to sell assets to
players who don't have time togrind that dungeon and we see
this in web 2 sometimes as well.
Right, people will spend moneyto buy skins and stuff that they
can't earn themselves becauseit saves them time.
So it's just a matter ofknowing that there's no such
(26:36):
thing as a free lunch.
It is a zero sum game in a lotof ways, and by that I mean not
everybody can win, not everybodycan be playing to earn.
If you have a play to earn game, you have to have people that
are spending money, which meansyou have to have a game that is
worth spending money on.
It has to be a game that's funenough, with the right ecosystem
, that people will actually wantto spend money with no hopes of
(26:57):
getting anything in return, andthen there's value for people
that are playing to earn tocapture some of that value
rather than all of that valuegoing to the gaming studio.
Right, it's a different kind ofeconomy where the revenue is
distributed differently, but Ido think there are sustainable
models that we will eventuallysee, or could potentially see,
but it's just a matter ofsetting the expectation right,
(27:20):
because there's no way thateveryone who plays the game can
earn.
That will never work.
The money has to come fromsomewhere.
Shash (27:26):
Yeah, I totally agree.
I think play to earn is really.
You can't have a game whereeverybody earns, but if there
are players who are willing tospend, then you know there's.
The economics allow for somepeople to earn as well.
Right Now I wanted to move onto another question, and this is
going back to the content andgrowing your audience.
(27:47):
So obviously you went pretty indepth on how you grew your
audience on YouTube.
One thing I'm curious about isso when you did a lot of work
with Helica in terms of growingtheir content marketing and
really figuring out a lot of thecontent strategy there, it was
interesting because it was muchmore B2B.
Can you run us through yourstrategy there?
(28:08):
What were the resultsaccomplished?
And, yeah, just go over how youapproach, let's say, content
growth for, like a B2B productin the gaming space.
Wesley (28:16):
Yeah, sure, so, honestly , even when it's B2B, the
principles are not too different, because what we were doing
around Helica revolves back togiving value to the community,
right, and in that way, helica'scontent was set up in a way
that they introduced the games,they give them a bit of a
background, and then they wereshow their dashboards.
(28:38):
They would demonstrate theirdashboards and say you know, hey
, studio XYZ, look at how muchmoney you missed in Royalty fees
this month.
Look at how much yourcompetitors are charging on XYZ
versus what you're charging anXYZ.
And the Threads that we endedup doing, because we ended up
(29:00):
using Twitter threads as a corefund, it as a core pillar for
the content, right, and it was anice hats off to the game.
It was providing value to thesegaming studios for for free, as
an as a like, a preview of, hey, here's what we can do.
And it was a great way to getthese studios to Republish or
repost.
(29:20):
Now it's no longer retweet on Xto repost these threads, which
was also a way for Helica to usetheir existing audience right
to engage with the gamers thatwere passionate about that
studio, to get some of theiraudience into the Helic audience
, and it was a way of providingvalue, like I keep saying, to
(29:40):
these gaming studios that reallydidn't require any work from
them, and so we combined thiswith what was trending right,
looking at the games that werehot, the games that were talked
about a lot on Twitter.
Whenever there was a Piece ofnews or a game that was in the
spotlight, it meant a lot ofpeople were looking for threads
about that game, and when Helicacan provide these insights that
(30:02):
no one else had, which they can, so a lot of it comes down to
on the B2B side is using yourstrength which, in this case,
helica was had at dashboards andanalytics that a lot of the
gaming space Hadn't seen orhadn't had access to yet.
So we're able to play on thatstrength, play on the strength
of what's trending Looking atthe games, and part of that is
(30:24):
being involved with the web3gaming Audience.
Right, we didn't hire justanyone to write these Twitter
threads.
We hired some of the a lot ofthe wolves down members actually
were people that I reached outto to see if they wanted to work
with, work with Helica, becauseI knew they were very
entrenched in the web3 gamingspace and they could identify
the trends and the gamingstudios that were quality that
(30:47):
we could talk about in order tomake this content fit well with
the narrative currently in thespace, and they would be able to
write threads that gamers andgame studios would Resonate with
right.
So, yeah, does that answer yourquestion?
There's a lot of compilingfactors there.
Shash (31:05):
Yeah, that totally makes a lot of sense and yeah,
definitely, I think the the bigthing here for B2B is you really
want to think from firstprinciples and you really want
to figure out that intersectionof content that is going to
attract both.
You know broader, that threegaming audience, because if you
don't get engagement, nobody'sgonna see your content, right
like you might be trying toreach founders, but if the
(31:27):
gaming community is not engagingwith it, nobody's gonna see it.
And so I Think there's thataspect of creating content that,
like the web3 gaming communityreally likes but also provides
value to your target customersand gives them insights that
they perhaps they didn't have.
So by this combination, gamingfounders would actually see this
content because it's startingto trend, the community sharing
(31:49):
it.
You know they're getting a hugenumber of new notifications and
getting a bunch of newfollowers, but they are also
getting valuable insights fromthe dashboard.
So I do think that for each web3B2B company Right, it's gonna
be a different strategy.
You really have to think fromfirst principles.
You can't just, you know, copyand paste, but it is important
to really understand that thereare nuances in the space and
(32:11):
it's not the same as the web2playbook.
There you may want to focus abit more on the B2B side, on
Web2, but like, let's say, youknow doing, let's say, google
search ads, having a lot of news, you know, having a newsletter,
really having, let's say, astrong presence on LinkedIn and
a lot more outreach, right,while in web3, I think where I
(32:33):
would start is actually startingwith Twitter and then Expanding
out to other platforms, becauseTwitter is really where
everybody's here, includingevery single founder in the
space.
There we're all addicted toTwitter in the space, so that's
the place to get started now.
Wanted to ask you a couple morequestions.
So number one what are the web3games right now that you're
most bullish on?
Wesley (32:55):
Yeah, that's an interesting one, and I'm most
bullish is A relative term,because I think one of the games
I'm most excited for isshrapnel.
The reason I'm most excited forshrapnel is I play a lot of FPS
as a gamer.
It's something I think I wouldenjoy, and extraction shooters
is a genre that I think has somevery unique principles that
(33:19):
will lend well to web3 in thefact that You're competing,
you're taking value from anotherplayer and you're risking it.
When you Extraction shooter,you kill someone, you take their
assets and then you have toextract from the map to get
those assets out of there andwhen there's a value to them,
there's like this whole netherlayer for Players and for
(33:41):
audiences to get excited about.
Now, this also lends theproblem of.
In that genre there's a bigissue with Cheaters, people
using aim bots and stuff, andwhen you financialize these
assets, you're gonna make thatproblem way, way more severe.
So there are pros and cons tothis, but it's actually a genre
that I'm very excited for and Ithink shrapnel is doing it well.
(34:01):
Midnight society Doctordisrespects game is another one
I have.
I think I just have had moreexposure to shrapnel, which is
why I lean more to that side,but I am excited to see how that
goes as well.
In terms of like bullish, someof the studios we've worked with
closely like I'm really bullishon.
It's one of the reasons we wereable to get so involved, right,
one of the reasons I was happyworking with them.
(34:22):
So pixie on, for example,building fableborn their game is
fun, cams a great founder, andthe way they have Built up the
game so far has beenentertaining and I know a lot of
the wolves really enjoy playingit as well.
It's not just me.
So that's on the mobile side.
That's a different genre.
That's a game I think I'm morecomfortable like using the term
bullish on.
Not only is it fun, but I seeit having a good Potential to be
(34:47):
quite successful, whereas theshrapnel I think it's more of a
risk but more of a reward andlike I get really excited about
the opportunity here and seeingwhat develops.
So, yeah, other other games I'ma bullish about games like a
arena as well.
I'm excited because they'redoing something very different.
The mixing the AI into aplatform fighter, where you have
the opportunity to Learn aboutAI while you play, is is an
(35:09):
interesting aspect as well.
So, yeah, and then there's abunch of you know, there's a
bunch of games that have beenhyped up because they have
strong founders things like wildcard, I think, are gonna be
interesting down the road forsure.
And there's a lot of games thatI know are building, because
Seen some pitch decks fromcompanies that are raising that
aren't public yet, and and thereare a lot of web 2 founders
(35:32):
that are entering the space withvery, very strong gaming
backgrounds and it's gonna be afew years before we see more of
these games like hit the surface, even with a demo.
But there's a lot cooking underthe surface that I've seen.
That just makes me bullish onweb 3 gaming in general as well.
Shash (35:49):
Hmm, got, it makes sense.
And, yeah, I agree, I think, aarena fable-born.
You know, one game I'm reallybullish on is the bornless.
I think Toby is an absolutelyAmazing founder and I'm very,
very bullish on the game they'rebuilding and, yeah, short bound
, as well as one that also thatwe were very involved with, that
(36:11):
I think is going to doextremely well.
So, yeah, lots of good gamescoming out soon and yeah, I
guess the the last question Ihave what's the moment in rep
tree that made you the mostproud, or you know, the proudest
moment in the space?
Wesley (36:28):
Yeah, that's, that's a tough one, but Definitely I
touched on this a little bit nowand again, but I Touched on
this a little bit earlier.
But now and again, someonereaches out to me and they're
just like hey, this video youmade a year ago, this
spreadsheet that you gave up forfree two years ago, was so
helpful.
I'm still using it today.
(36:49):
That, to me, is when I getreally proud, when someone tells
me that I helped them withtheir journey to education
around web 3 gaming and crypto.
Because for me, it's that'swhat it's been about.
It's always been about givingback to the space and helping
education.
Because crypto needs to grow, itneeds to be an easier space and
and crypto in general, but web3 gaming as well.
(37:10):
It needs to be an easy space toonboard gamers.
There has to be no frictionthere.
And how do we get there?
We get there by Sharingresources, like making the
education around it better andtaking down barriers.
And so for me, I've always justlike how can I help take down
these barriers to make cryptohave a wider adoption?
And that's going to helpeveryone who's already in the
space, right?
And so when someone comes outand tells me I was successful in
(37:33):
one of these goals and myResources or my videos really
help them learn a certainconcept or help them in their
journey into web 3 gaming.
That's when I get the mostproud.
Shash (37:45):
Yeah, that's, that's awesome and you know, that's
definitely something very nice.
It feels good to help peopleand hear that okay, that you've
had an impact on them or theirbusiness or you know whatever
they're doing.
So, to finish it off, how cangames Studio okay, I'll say that
again.
So, to finish it off, how can,let's say, game studios, gamers,
(38:08):
anybody in the space reach outto?
How can they connect with you?
Wesley (38:12):
Yeah, absolutely, I'm always.
Dms are always open on Twitter.
Web 3, wesley.
You can find me on LinkedIn aswell.
I think we can put some linksdown in the description of this
video to to make it easier.
And you can hit myself or shashas well up on email as well,
wesley, at crescendogg, andchecking those regulars,
(38:32):
checking those regularly and,yeah, whatever is most
convenient for you, but I'mpretty easy to get hold of.
Shash (38:38):
Yes, pleasure chatting.
And guys, go check out Wesley'sYouTube channel.
It's an absolute like trove ofinformation.
Lots of great videos in thereand, yeah, thanks for tuning
into the podcast.
If you're an Apple, if you'rewherever you are, give us a
rating and I'm looking forwardto seeing you on the next
podcast.
Cheers you.
Welcome to the Crescendo Go-To-Market podcast.
Today Web3Wesley have , who'smy business partner, but he is
better known for building one ofthe Web 3 Gaming Gaming YouTube
channels to 30,000 subs.
He was involved in Axie in theearly days and he's also the
community manager at WolvesDAO,which is the most exclusive
(00:21):
community in Veptory Gaming.
So, vestley, do you want togive us a quick introduction to
yourself and how you got intoVeptory Gaming?
Wesley (00:29):
Yeah, absolutely so.
As Shash pointed out, I'mWesley.
I have a YouTube channel,web3wesley as well, and we're
working together at Crescendo onthe marketing engagements.
It can also catch me over atWolvesDAO.
But as to how I got into Web3and Web3 Gaming specifically,
it's a bit of a long story.
But I guess we go back to cryptoin general.
I started in late 2014 and Idon't remember how I first heard
(00:53):
about Bitcoin, but I'd heardabout this thing.
You could use spare computerparts and earn money, and that
sounded good to me because I'vealways been a gamer at heart and
you know.
So it's funny because cryptoand Web3 Gaming started with
gaming for me, even though itbegan with using my old gaming
PC, putting all these parts intoa milk crate, and I had this
ugly mining rig in my basementwhere I wasn't paying any
(01:16):
electricity at the time, and itwas right then that mining
Bitcoin kind of becameunprofitable without dedicated
mining units or without biggerpools, and so we actually
switched and me and my buddieswere some of the first people
mining dodgecoin back in the day, which I dumped right away
Otherwise I'd be retired, as Ithink a lot of us have that kind
(01:37):
of story in crypto, but Ishipped it away from crypto.
I wrote my economics thesis onremittance payments and how
Bitcoin was going to change themand how it was going to
revolutionize remittancepayments around the world.
But I stepped into other rolesand I ended up working in not
Bitcoin mining but physical goldmining.
And I did that for a number ofyears working with public
(01:59):
companies, taking companies,public, doing marketing and
operations, and the whole time Iwas keeping an eye on crypto as
a retail investor and 2017-2018, nfts started popping up and I
remember one day someone sent mea deck for a trading card game
and it was a trading card gamethey're gonna use NFTs with.
(02:19):
And I called my buddy and I waslike, whoa, how we use crypto
is gonna change like this isrevolutionary.
And it's funny because theproject died.
It never got off the ground andI was like, okay, so people
aren't too serious about theseNFT things.
And I kind of left it alone andI didn't get too involved with
Ethereum and it wasn't till Axiekind of came around that I
looked at gaming and NFTs again.
I was like, okay, here'ssomething that's actually
(02:41):
picking up.
And then that's when I startedkind of shifting things and
really focusing on the web 3side.
Shash (02:47):
Interesting.
So tell us about the early dayswith Axie, because I think
that's what you're best knownfor.
In those early days, as you gotreally involved, you were
helping a lot of guilds, you hadthese crazy spreadsheets for
reading and so on.
So tell us about the early Axiedays.
Wesley (03:03):
Yeah, I definitely wasn't the first.
You know, I wasn't one of thefirst round of people in Axie,
because Axie started building in2018 before anybody knew about
it.
Where you know, gos often talksabout putting a message in the
discord and waking up in themorning, and it's still the same
message and I wasn't aroundduring those days.
I got in as it sort of startedto get popular.
(03:23):
Before the, there was adocumentary about Axie scholars.
Before that went viral.
I started dipping around withAxie because I noticed in the
crypto space, all of a sudden,there was a bunch of people
talking about this game AxieInfinity, like on Reddit and
stuff.
People in the Philippines wereasking about how to set up
wallets and crypto questions,and I noticed some of this.
(03:44):
I was like, wow, what's all thesudden hype?
That's kind of picking up and Isaw an opportunity there.
I saw that, wow, there'sactually a lot of people that
want to play this game and haveheard about it, and so I started
playing.
I started with a couple axesjust to check it out, you know,
and and I did actually find thegame fun.
I've talked about this before.
(04:04):
A lot of people, I think, gotin only because they wanted to
earn.
But I've been a Pokemon fan mywhole life and I could see some
Pokemon elements in the game andthe earning element was nice on
top.
But I did enjoy the game and soI was in crypto.
I enjoyed the game and Ithought, you know, and here's an
opportunity for this to growinto something.
I saw a lot of potential andthat's really why I kind of
dived in headfirst and thought,you know what, let's try this
(04:26):
breeding thing, let's try thisguild thing.
Shash (04:28):
And it sort of spiraled from there interesting, and
why'd you decide to start makingvideos on Axie?
Wesley (04:36):
so why I just started making videos on Axie.
I've been casually makingvideos for a long time and I've
made this.
I've monetized three YouTubechannels.
They're not as big as this Axieone, this web three, gaming one
, but the other ones got somedecent hyped, I think the first
one.
I was making Call of Dutyvideos 12 years ago and YouTube
(05:00):
offered to monetize my channelpretty fast because I was
getting getting a lot of viewson that.
I'd taken the videos down sincebecause they're they're
horrible.
I go back and look at them, butit was always a hobby of mine
making videos on the side.
When I was in the miningoperation to before I started
working in the office, I didsome work in the field, and part
of that I used to run a drone,and so I used to make.
I was making drone footage, andwhen I started working remotely
(05:23):
, I've always been inphotography, so I had a good
camera as well, and sovideography in general has
always been something that I'vebeen passionate about.
I've worked on a few videoprojects in the past, done a
documentary on beer funny enough, that's a story for another day
and so I called up one of mybuddies one day.
I was like hey, do you think Ican fit crypto content into one
(05:43):
of my other channels?
I was doing some videos aboutJapan and I was like, do you
think I can fit some cryptocontent on here?
Because I know the algorithm onYouTube doesn't like it if I
start mixing and matching.
And you know they supported mytheory that you know what, it's
time to make a new channel justfor crypto related activities.
And that was when I was juststarting to get into Axi, and
the original idea wasn't reallyAxi necessarily, and as I
(06:06):
started thinking about it, I waslike you know what I want the
channel to be about?
Web through gaming but there'sonly Axi.
That's like the only game.
Really, that's any good.
There are a couple in the mix,like Splinterlands has been
around a long time.
I was aware of them but Ihadn't played it.
And there are a few games, butthere weren't much before Axi
blew up, and so it was kind oflike, okay, I need a new channel
to focus on a new topic.
And so I started making I wasalready doing videos and I
(06:29):
thought, you know, let's make adedicated channel for the web
three gaming.
And I called it attack on Axioriginally, and that was a
reference to attack on Titan,just because I'm a big anime fan
, if anyone who watches mychannel as well.
And I was like you know, I likethe, the.
What do you call thatassociation?
No, the grammatic term for itis like a, with the double, the
double letter, and it justsounded good.
(06:50):
I was like you know what,eventually, if I have to rebrand
this to web three Wesley whichI did, but that was always in
the start of my mind but I waslike you know what, let's focus
on Axi, let's dive in, because Iwas doing it right, I was
learning these things and itfelt like an opportunity to help
other people learn as wellthat's very cool.
Shash (07:07):
And why did you decide to kind of pivot from just Axi to
broader web three gaming?
What was the reasoning behindthat?
Wesley (07:14):
yeah, that was always the long-term goal, but when I
started there was only Axireally there was only a few
options for gaming and so Iwanted to keep it in a small
enough niche that I wouldn'thave a new channel again, and so
I thought the web three gaming,the NFT gaming space, just kind
of made sense, and so makingthat pivot was a little bit
(07:35):
difficult, of course, because alot of my initial audience was
interested in Axi specificallyand but a lot of them in general
were also just I.
My channel was built up of alot of like medium and small
guilds, a lot of people thatwere doing something similar to
me and the fact that they werenot necessarily a scholar, but
they were organizing groups ofscholars or they were buying and
(07:55):
selling Axis in large amountsand they were participating
because I didn't really makecontent around how to play the
game.
That's the other thing.
When I started the channel was,I looked at what was out there
and I was like, okay, there's afew channels about.
There were two or three backthen.
One in particular was large,the rest were fairly small, that
(08:15):
we're talking about how to playaxi, and I was like, okay, this
content is covered?
What is not covered?
What have I had to learn fromscratch?
That's been kind of difficult,okay, like learning how to breed
, learning how to set up an ROIcalculator, learning how to
track all these statistics andMake sure that you're not
wasting money, wasting time, etc.
And these were things that majorguilds were doing, and when I
(08:37):
talked to the big guilds, they'dhired someone for this and but
the little guys, themedium-sized guys, you know,
maybe you had 50 scholars, maybeyou had hundreds scholars.
They didn't have tools for thisand a lot of people were losing
focus, wasting money, and so Ithought you know what?
I'm building these tools formyself.
Here's a good niche for me tohelp other people, and I still
get to be passionate aboutcrypto, I still get to be
(08:57):
passionate about gaming, but axiwas the only thing to focus on
at the time.
So the shift was because Ialways wanted to talk about more
than just axi, but there wasn'tany other decent game around
back then to talk about.
Shash (09:09):
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense and I think lately you've
seen a lot more of that.
Three games come out that areinteresting, that are fun.
So, you know, while axi stillgoing strongly strong, this a
lot broader a furnish.
And yeah, I'm kind of curiouswith, also kind of, your
involvement with wolf's down.
So we're both members in wolf'sdown.
I think it's a really greatcommunity.
Can you first give us a quickbreakdown of what the wolves are
(09:31):
about and then how you gotinvolved with them?
Wesley (09:33):
So wolves down?
Yeah, for those of you whodon't know, wolves down is
essentially a collection ofthought leaders in the web
through gaming space.
Now I say a Dow, we call itwolves down, but there's been
some topic this has been a topicinternally that we're not
really a Dow in the sense thatit's not voting on decisions.
(09:54):
There's no token.
It's an application based alphagroup, essentially, and we have
a variety of members fromacross game founders, devs
theses Everything you can thinkof content creators and the
central pillar for everyone isweb through gaming.
This is what brings us together.
This is what we're allpassionate about and we
sometimes call it the only guildyou can't buy your way into
(10:16):
because it's application basedand based on people's merit and
Experience and passion aboutgaming.
We accept them into the Dow andwe do kick people out regularly
.
It's one of the things we'reknown for, not in the sense that
we're harsh about it, but ifsomeone doesn't contribute to
the conversation, which happens,you know, sometimes you join a
guild, etc.
You're too busy and you don'tcontribute, so we do kick people
(10:38):
out because we get a lot ofapplications and we want to
cycle in new members whensomeone's not contributing.
We are 300 membersApproximately.
That number fluctuates a littlebit and we come together and we
talk about everything relatedto web through gaming.
And so how I first got involvedwas Peyton the founder, about a
year and a half ago, and Ijumped on a call with me and
(11:01):
just said hey, watch your videos, like what you're doing in the
space, how'd you like to joinwolves now?
And for me at first I was likeyou know what, I'm not sure I
have enough time to contributebecause it's something I was
worried about.
And he said you know what,don't worry about it, jump in,
try it out, see how it goes andwe'll go from there right.
And so I got a.
(11:21):
He got me some of theapplication, I filled it out,
they they grabbed me in becauseI had already talked to Peyton
and the team and I loved it.
Honestly, the conversations areamazing, like anything to do
with web 3 gaming.
Whether you're a Founder tryingto figure out how to set up
your legal structure, whetheryou're a content creator who
wants to know how to improve itsvideo quality, or whether
(11:42):
you're a D gen and you just wantto know what's the next gaming
NFT that's gonna 100x.
We have all these kind ofconversations in the Dow and
honestly, I just got sucked inand as I got much more involved,
we have a group of Admin thatmake the decisions.
Basically run the Dow based onvolunteer, and so there were
some spots.
Originally I was doing mostlyanalytics work, like how do we
(12:03):
evaluate the games we think areworth looking at and talking
about, and then that expandedinto into community management
as well, where I take a lot ofthe calls and set up a lot of
the Collaborations we do withthe wolf style.
Shash (12:15):
Awesome, yeah, and I mean I agree 100% like wolf style is
probably the purest and one ofthe best communities in that
tree I've seen, just number one.
You can't buy your way in.
There's no product being sold,you know there's issues purely a
place to hang out and Becauseof that I think the conversation
quality is extremely high andyou see some of the top leaders
(12:36):
in the industry there.
It's definitely one of theplaces where this you know, you
keep your ears to the groundthere and you're kind of ahead
of what's happening, and I knowthere are other a lot, I know
there are a lot of otherweb-free gaming communities and
a lot of them are NFT based, butWolfsdale, by far, I think, is
the highest quality.
Wesley (12:53):
Yeah, wolfsdale honestly has become more than just a
group or a Dow.
It's like a family, honestly,there, the friendships I've
established in the Wolfsdale arevery meaningful and it's a very
amazing group of people.
Honestly, it's it's one of theother reasons that I got so
involved with it.
Just, it's an amazing space.
If you haven't checked us out,make sure you check out
(13:15):
Wolfsdale on Twitter and, youknow, fill out that application,
because we love to havelike-minded people in there.
Shash (13:22):
Yeah, absolutely.
And then the other.
The other cool thing I rememberis when we went to token 2049
at Singapore.
We constantly were hanging outwith other wolves and you know
we had.
Basically it was such a greatexperience.
We went to that Chineserestaurant, all of us that just
like ate crab with our heads.
It was a great time, right,like it was like really awesome
(13:43):
just having beers and hangingout as like actually
establishing friendships Did notfeel like a networking event or
anything.
It was just like a crew of, youknow, people who are interested
in similar stuff and we're justall hanging out.
So definitely recommendchecking out Wolfsdale.
And so that brings me to mynext question, right?
So, if Wolfsdale is obviouslyblown up quite a bit, your
(14:04):
YouTube channel also has gottento 30k subs plus.
You've also done a lot of workwith a lot of different gaming
projects, right?
So you know we've workedtogether with Halica, where we
basically did a lot of theircontent marketing, helped, you
know, build out the creatorprogram and really help them get
a lot of game studio leads.
So Could you give us like avery high level.
So yeah, I guess the two-partquestion is how did you blow up
(14:28):
your audience?
And then how can anybody blowup their audience, whether it be
a company or whether it be anindividual who wants to be you
know, that's re gaming kind ofinfluencer?
Wesley (14:38):
Yeah, fair.
So for me a lot of it Goes handin hand with Axie doing well.
Right, I can't discredit thefact that I Started making
content right before Axie gotpopular and mean part of that
not to sound, you know, concededin any way, but part of that
(14:59):
was me making a Bet that Axiewould do well and I could see
the demand was there.
I thought honestly I believe inthe principle of web through
gaming and NFTs and so I thoughtthis is a horse I want to back
and that worked out quite well.
I didn't expect the price whenI started, just in like pricing
terms, when I started makingvideos on Axie, axs was maybe $2
(15:20):
and then it blew up over ahundred dollars and all of a
sudden there are all thesepeople looking for content
around Axie.
So that helps for sure.
And the other thing was reallyfinding the niche that no one
had done right, because, as Isaid, there were a couple videos
about how to play Axie, how tohave the best team and how to
win on the leaderboard, butthere wasn't anyone who was
(15:41):
really teaching you how do youmanage 100 scholars that want to
play this game?
How do you breed your axeswithout losing a bunch of money
and how do you put $10,000 intothis game and make it as safe as
possible so that you're goingto make a profit and you're not
just going to lose this?
You know, 10 grand, right, andI was talking about things like
(16:01):
what are the risks as well.
You know, because I've alwaystried to be rather unbiased.
You know, I told people, ofcourse, crypto itself is very
risky.
This space is very new.
Now we're talking aboutaltcoins, now we're getting even
more risky, and so I have nodelusions that.
You know, these things aren'thugely risky in a lot of senses.
Right, you can see this withAxie having a bridge hack in the
(16:22):
past.
You can see this with peoplelosing seed phrases in crypto,
right, so I was making contentaround that to like safety
principles how do you make, howdo you run all these aspects of
crypto and NFT gaming that noone had talked about yet, right,
because at first, people arejust, they have the gameplay and
they're talking about how doyou make the best team?
(16:43):
Right, like traditional videogame videos, and those are great
.
But I also knew that niche was alittle bit saturated and I kind
of found this niche that no onewas making, and so that's
definitely something you can do,and it's not necessarily
finding a niche that is no one'sin it, because often that's
hard to do.
Sometimes it's just aboutfinding that competitive edge
(17:06):
that no one else is doing,finding a way to make videos and
add value that someone elseisn't doing, and so for me, I
did find a niche that was veryunder saturated, but I also gave
away a lot of tools.
I gave away a lot ofspreadsheets, as you said, that
I was making, and those are oneof the things I got the most
compliments on.
Like, even now, two years later, some people will message me
like, hey, this spreadsheet youmade two years ago, I'm still
(17:28):
using it and I've adapted it fora different NFT, a different
game, because it was just superuseful, and so to me, that
always makes me really happy andthose were the kind of that was
the kind of way I was givingvalue back to the community and,
honestly, people are alwayslooking for an easy way to blow
up on Twitter, youtube, etc.
(17:49):
But for me, some of those toolstook me like the whole week to
make in my spare time, right,and I just gave them away
because I wanted to give valueto the community, and so the one
thing I would say is it can behard work.
You know, starting a YouTubechannel, starting a Twitter
threat Twitter account andbecoming big is very hard to do,
and I often tell people, ifyour goal is to make content
(18:10):
full time and you just want tomake money, you're going to
struggle.
If you find for me, videomaking videos was a hobby, right
, that's how it started and Ireally enjoyed it and I enjoy
making tools like that,spreadsheets like that.
That's why it came easily and Iwas able to put in a lot of
work and give a lot of value topeople without it feeling like a
grind, and so I always tellpeople like, if making a YouTube
(18:32):
video is a grind for you andyou don't enjoy doing it,
there's not a lot of money beinga content creator for most
people, and so I think startingfor the right reason is a big
part of it, and then findingthat niche that you can really
succeed in is another part.
Finding a way to give valuethat is missing to a certain
niche or to a certain communitywill get you a very long way.
Shash (18:53):
Yeah, I agree 100 percent , and I think that's one of the
most important pieces thatpeople miss is if you're trying
to do something that you knowthere's an niche that is
competitive, the only way youcan get ahead in a niche that's
competitive is by beingabsolutely obsessive and like
creating something that'sridiculous, right.
So at that point you're doinglike 10 X the effort and I have
(19:14):
seen friends do that right andsucceed and like niches that are
competitive.
I recently had a friend of mine, tim.
He basically made a programming, like he started a new YouTube
channel and there was a video heworked on for like months on
how he learned programming andgot a job with it in six months
and it blew up Blue reallythinks God, over a million views
or whatever, and he's reallyblown up in that way.
(19:34):
But that also, like with thatcompetitive niche is like
requires a massive amount ofeffort, right.
That literally took like monthsand months and, like you know,
maybe like a thousand hours ofwork.
So it's like you can I do thinkthat, like what she did, there
was, you know, essentially finda niche that was growing right
and then create content andprovide tools that nobody else
(19:54):
was doing.
So there was a lot ofdifferentiation, and I think
that's probably like the smarterway to go about it is in terms
of just being able to get likethe maximum ROI.
And I did something similarwith my first YouTube channel,
which was a YouTube advertisingchannel.
I didn't really blow it up tocrazy numbers, but I got to like
10 K subs and that was mostlythrough just you know, basically
(20:15):
finding a niche that nobody wastalking about, youtube ads and
essentially building authorityand writing a lot of content
building agency around it, andthat was a great way to grow
that business and our.
You know, we're getting leadsthrough content, right.
So I do think that really beingable to think from post
principles and thinking that,hey, am I just competing with a
million other people who aredoing this, or do I have a
(20:36):
unique angle?
Do I have a unique niche?
And even if the niche isn'tunique, am I approaching it in a
way that's fresh and can allowme to like succeed?
So I absolutely agreed on that.
Now, one thing that I'm alsoreally curious about is you are
based in Japan, right, and Japanis obviously pretty big in the
gaming space and the vectorgaming space.
(20:58):
I'm curious how Japanese gamersview vector gaming.
What's the feeling like on theground there?
And yeah, I would love to diveinto that as well.
Wesley (21:09):
Yeah, I would start off by saying it's not as negative
the sentiment as it is in theWest.
Gamers in the West hate NFTs,and you can see this from any of
the big gaming magazines.
Whenever they write any kind ofarticle, they're tailoring to
their audience that despisescrypto, nfts.
But it's not so much so in theWest, and I think it's hard to
(21:34):
speculate on why.
But I have a few theories.
One of them is in Japan and inAsia in general, mobile gaming
is very big.
It tends to be the PC gamersthat are more opposed to crypto
and NFT.
They're a lot more hardcore.
The mobile game scene is muchmore casual.
People don't have such strongopinions, and you can see this
in your communities too.
Like FPS communities can befricking toxic as hell, but you
(21:58):
very rarely get a hyper casualgaming community that's very
toxic and very, you know, hasvery strong opinions one way or
the other as well.
So that's part of it.
And the other thing is I thinkthere's been less exposure to
crypto in Japan in general, sothere's been less people have
been less exposed to some of thehacks and scams that we've seen
more in the West.
(22:19):
Part of that is to do withregulations, crypto regulations.
The government has been sayingthat they're going to make
things better in Japan, but taxregulations are pretty harsh on
crypto.
It's often Delta's incomeinstead of capital gains, which
just means that a lot of peopledon't want to touch it, and so
there's less knowledge, lessexperience about NFTs, which can
(22:41):
be a good thing.
We can also be a bad thing, butI do think it helps with the
whole sentiment.
There's less negativeconnotations with NFTs here in
the West and we'll see likemobile gaming is big, even
though PC gaming is been risingyear over year, it's not nearly
as prominent, neither as console, as it is in Canada, america
(23:02):
and a lot of Europe as well.
So definitely a more positivesentiment overall, honestly, but
I wouldn't say they're, Iwouldn't say they're overly like
super bullish on NFTs andgaming.
I think there's just a lot lessawareness around it.
Shash (23:16):
Interesting.
And what about the rest of Asia, like Korea, philippines,
vietnam?
Wesley (23:24):
Yeah, I mean Philippines of Vietnam.
Southeast Asia has had exposureon the play to earn side a lot,
especially with Axie being alarge, large proportion of the
players being in the Philippines.
So there's been I think there'sdefinitely been some bridges
burned because tokens have dived, but overall it does seem like
(23:46):
when I talk to these regionsthey're still very bullish on
crypto because they like thisplay to earn, they like the idea
of playing video games andearning money, and even when
it's only a little bit of moneyin a country where that, you
know, 10 cents US goes a lotfarther that still can be quite
profitable right, even whentheir token prices are quite
lower.
Because I think, you know, whenwe have low token prices,
(24:08):
you're only earning a coupledollars a day on some of these
games.
You know, if you're in theStates, you know you can't even
buy a meal, but in some of thecheaper places in the world in
terms of like purchasing power,it goes a lot further right, and
so people tend to be play thesegames a lot more.
I still think when I talk topeople, like when you talk to
Web3 Game Studios, a lot oftheir audience is still coming
(24:29):
out of Asian countries likeVietnam, like the Philippines.
Ladam is picking up, for sure,countries like that, but that
has to do more with the earningside of things.
The other thing is these arealso countries that are heavy
into mobile.
Asia in general like is just alot more mobile heavy.
The Philippines.
People have cell phones, smartphones readily available, with
(24:52):
internet readily available, butnot many of them have a gaming
PC or a gaming console, forexample, and so there's that's
definitely a big factor in it aswell.
Shash (25:02):
Got it, got it.
And you know you just mentioned, obviously, like a lot of the
Southeast Asian gamers, like the, you know Play Door and
actually you know even a coupleof dollars a day works for them.
But what is your opinion on,like, the economics of Play Door
and do you think there's a wayto make it sustainable?
Or is Play Door an as a conceptflawed?
Or yeah, what's your opinionaround the tokenomics slash
(25:27):
viability of a model like PlayDoor?
Wesley (25:31):
So it's tough to answer that, because Play Door means a
little, means something a littledifferent to everyone, right?
In general, I would say PlayDoor is not dead.
I think it's okay.
It's just a matter of and I hadthis conversation on Twitter
space the other day about bigtime and someone was talking
about how big time is pay toplay.
(25:53):
You have to buy a bunch of NFTsand stuff to play the game in an
earning sense, and to me, aslong as the pay is higher than
the earn earn, you can have abalance.
Right, you have to have somepeople that are willing to pay
money to save time, and then youcan have people that are
willing to spend time to earnmoney.
(26:14):
Right, people can grind in adungeon to sell assets to
players who don't have time togrind that dungeon and we see
this in web 2 sometimes as well.
Right, people will spend moneyto buy skins and stuff that they
can't earn themselves becauseit saves them time.
So it's just a matter ofknowing that there's no such
(26:36):
thing as a free lunch.
It is a zero sum game in a lotof ways, and by that I mean not
everybody can win, not everybodycan be playing to earn.
If you have a play to earn game, you have to have people that
are spending money, which meansyou have to have a game that is
worth spending money on.
It has to be a game that's funenough, with the right ecosystem
, that people will actually wantto spend money with no hopes of
(26:57):
getting anything in return, andthen there's value for people
that are playing to earn tocapture some of that value
rather than all of that valuegoing to the gaming studio.
Right, it's a different kind ofeconomy where the revenue is
distributed differently, but Ido think there are sustainable
models that we will eventuallysee, or could potentially see,
but it's just a matter ofsetting the expectation right,
(27:20):
because there's no way thateveryone who plays the game can
earn.
That will never work.
The money has to come fromsomewhere.
Shash (27:26):
Yeah, I totally agree.
I think play to earn is really.
You can't have a game whereeverybody earns, but if there
are players who are willing tospend, then you know there's.
The economics allow for somepeople to earn as well.
Right Now I wanted to move onto another question, and this is
going back to the content andgrowing your audience.
(27:47):
So obviously you went pretty indepth on how you grew your
audience on YouTube.
One thing I'm curious about isso when you did a lot of work
with Helica in terms of growingtheir content marketing and
really figuring out a lot of thecontent strategy there, it was
interesting because it was muchmore B2B.
Can you run us through yourstrategy there?
(28:08):
What were the resultsaccomplished?
And, yeah, just go over how youapproach, let's say, content
growth for, like a B2B productin the gaming space.
Wesley (28:16):
Yeah, sure, so, honestly , even when it's B2B, the
principles are not too different, because what we were doing
around Helica revolves back togiving value to the community,
right, and in that way, helica'scontent was set up in a way
that they introduced the games,they give them a bit of a
background, and then they wereshow their dashboards.
(28:38):
They would demonstrate theirdashboards and say you know, hey
, studio XYZ, look at how muchmoney you missed in Royalty fees
this month.
Look at how much yourcompetitors are charging on XYZ
versus what you're charging anXYZ.
And the Threads that we endedup doing, because we ended up
(29:00):
using Twitter threads as a corefund, it as a core pillar for
the content, right, and it was anice hats off to the game.
It was providing value to thesegaming studios for for free, as
an as a like, a preview of, hey, here's what we can do.
And it was a great way to getthese studios to Republish or
repost.
(29:20):
Now it's no longer retweet on Xto repost these threads, which
was also a way for Helica to usetheir existing audience right
to engage with the gamers thatwere passionate about that
studio, to get some of theiraudience into the Helic audience
, and it was a way of providingvalue, like I keep saying, to
(29:40):
these gaming studios that reallydidn't require any work from
them, and so we combined thiswith what was trending right,
looking at the games that werehot, the games that were talked
about a lot on Twitter.
Whenever there was a Piece ofnews or a game that was in the
spotlight, it meant a lot ofpeople were looking for threads
about that game, and when Helicacan provide these insights that
(30:02):
no one else had, which they can, so a lot of it comes down to
on the B2B side is using yourstrength which, in this case,
helica was had at dashboards andanalytics that a lot of the
gaming space Hadn't seen orhadn't had access to yet.
So we're able to play on thatstrength, play on the strength
of what's trending Looking atthe games, and part of that is
(30:24):
being involved with the web3gaming Audience.
Right, we didn't hire justanyone to write these Twitter
threads.
We hired some of the a lot ofthe wolves down members actually
were people that I reached outto to see if they wanted to work
with, work with Helica, becauseI knew they were very
entrenched in the web3 gamingspace and they could identify
the trends and the gamingstudios that were quality that
(30:47):
we could talk about in order tomake this content fit well with
the narrative currently in thespace, and they would be able to
write threads that gamers andgame studios would Resonate with
right.
So, yeah, does that answer yourquestion?
There's a lot of compilingfactors there.
Shash (31:05):
Yeah, that totally makes a lot of sense and yeah,
definitely, I think the the bigthing here for B2B is you really
want to think from firstprinciples and you really want
to figure out that intersectionof content that is going to
attract both.
You know broader, that threegaming audience, because if you
don't get engagement, nobody'sgonna see your content, right
like you might be trying toreach founders, but if the
(31:27):
gaming community is not engagingwith it, nobody's gonna see it.
And so I Think there's thataspect of creating content that,
like the web3 gaming communityreally likes but also provides
value to your target customersand gives them insights that
they perhaps they didn't have.
So by this combination, gamingfounders would actually see this
content because it's startingto trend, the community sharing
(31:49):
it.
You know they're getting a hugenumber of new notifications and
getting a bunch of newfollowers, but they are also
getting valuable insights fromthe dashboard.
So I do think that for each web3B2B company Right, it's gonna
be a different strategy.
You really have to think fromfirst principles.
You can't just, you know, copyand paste, but it is important
to really understand that thereare nuances in the space and
(32:11):
it's not the same as the web2playbook.
There you may want to focus abit more on the B2B side, on
Web2, but like, let's say, youknow doing, let's say, google
search ads, having a lot of news, you know, having a newsletter,
really having, let's say, astrong presence on LinkedIn and
a lot more outreach, right,while in web3, I think where I
(32:33):
would start is actually startingwith Twitter and then Expanding
out to other platforms, becauseTwitter is really where
everybody's here, includingevery single founder in the
space.
There we're all addicted toTwitter in the space, so that's
the place to get started now.
Wanted to ask you a couple morequestions.
So number one what are the web3games right now that you're
most bullish on?
Wesley (32:55):
Yeah, that's an interesting one, and I'm most
bullish is A relative term,because I think one of the games
I'm most excited for isshrapnel.
The reason I'm most excited forshrapnel is I play a lot of FPS
as a gamer.
It's something I think I wouldenjoy, and extraction shooters
is a genre that I think has somevery unique principles that
(33:19):
will lend well to web3 in thefact that You're competing,
you're taking value from anotherplayer and you're risking it.
When you Extraction shooter,you kill someone, you take their
assets and then you have toextract from the map to get
those assets out of there andwhen there's a value to them,
there's like this whole netherlayer for Players and for
(33:41):
audiences to get excited about.
Now, this also lends theproblem of.
In that genre there's a bigissue with Cheaters, people
using aim bots and stuff, andwhen you financialize these
assets, you're gonna make thatproblem way, way more severe.
So there are pros and cons tothis, but it's actually a genre
that I'm very excited for and Ithink shrapnel is doing it well.
(34:01):
Midnight society Doctordisrespects game is another one
I have.
I think I just have had moreexposure to shrapnel, which is
why I lean more to that side,but I am excited to see how that
goes as well.
In terms of like bullish, someof the studios we've worked with
closely like I'm really bullishon.
It's one of the reasons we wereable to get so involved, right,
one of the reasons I was happyworking with them.
(34:22):
So pixie on, for example,building fableborn their game is
fun, cams a great founder, andthe way they have Built up the
game so far has beenentertaining and I know a lot of
the wolves really enjoy playingit as well.
It's not just me.
So that's on the mobile side.
That's a different genre.
That's a game I think I'm morecomfortable like using the term
bullish on.
Not only is it fun, but I seeit having a good Potential to be
(34:47):
quite successful, whereas theshrapnel I think it's more of a
risk but more of a reward andlike I get really excited about
the opportunity here and seeingwhat develops.
So, yeah, other other games I'ma bullish about games like a
arena as well.
I'm excited because they'redoing something very different.
The mixing the AI into aplatform fighter, where you have
the opportunity to Learn aboutAI while you play, is is an
(35:09):
interesting aspect as well.
So, yeah, and then there's abunch of you know, there's a
bunch of games that have beenhyped up because they have
strong founders things like wildcard, I think, are gonna be
interesting down the road forsure.
And there's a lot of games thatI know are building, because
Seen some pitch decks fromcompanies that are raising that
aren't public yet, and and thereare a lot of web 2 founders
(35:32):
that are entering the space withvery, very strong gaming
backgrounds and it's gonna be afew years before we see more of
these games like hit the surface, even with a demo.
But there's a lot cooking underthe surface that I've seen.
That just makes me bullish onweb 3 gaming in general as well.
Shash (35:49):
Hmm, got, it makes sense.
And, yeah, I agree, I think, aarena fable-born.
You know, one game I'm reallybullish on is the bornless.
I think Toby is an absolutelyAmazing founder and I'm very,
very bullish on the game they'rebuilding and, yeah, short bound
, as well as one that also thatwe were very involved with, that
(36:11):
I think is going to doextremely well.
So, yeah, lots of good gamescoming out soon and yeah, I
guess the the last question Ihave what's the moment in rep
tree that made you the mostproud, or you know, the proudest
moment in the space?
Wesley (36:28):
Yeah, that's, that's a tough one, but Definitely I
touched on this a little bit nowand again, but I Touched on
this a little bit earlier.
But now and again, someonereaches out to me and they're
just like hey, this video youmade a year ago, this
spreadsheet that you gave up forfree two years ago, was so
helpful.
I'm still using it today.
(36:49):
That, to me, is when I getreally proud, when someone tells
me that I helped them withtheir journey to education
around web 3 gaming and crypto.
Because for me, it's that'swhat it's been about.
It's always been about givingback to the space and helping
education.
Because crypto needs to grow, itneeds to be an easier space and
and crypto in general, but web3 gaming as well.
(37:10):
It needs to be an easy space toonboard gamers.
There has to be no frictionthere.
And how do we get there?
We get there by Sharingresources, like making the
education around it better andtaking down barriers.
And so for me, I've always justlike how can I help take down
these barriers to make cryptohave a wider adoption?
And that's going to helpeveryone who's already in the
space, right?
And so when someone comes outand tells me I was successful in
(37:33):
one of these goals and myResources or my videos really
help them learn a certainconcept or help them in their
journey into web 3 gaming.
That's when I get the mostproud.
Shash (37:45):
Yeah, that's, that's awesome and you know, that's
definitely something very nice.
It feels good to help peopleand hear that okay, that you've
had an impact on them or theirbusiness or you know whatever
they're doing.
So, to finish it off, how cangames Studio okay, I'll say that
again.
So, to finish it off, how can,let's say, game studios, gamers,
(38:08):
anybody in the space reach outto?
How can they connect with you?
Wesley (38:12):
Yeah, absolutely, I'm always.
Dms are always open on Twitter.
Web 3, wesley.
You can find me on LinkedIn aswell.
I think we can put some linksdown in the description of this
video to to make it easier.
And you can hit myself or shashas well up on email as well,
wesley, at crescendogg, andchecking those regulars,
(38:32):
checking those regularly and,yeah, whatever is most
convenient for you, but I'mpretty easy to get hold of.
Shash (38:38):
Yes, pleasure chatting.
And guys, go check out Wesley'sYouTube channel.
It's an absolute like trove ofinformation.
Lots of great videos in thereand, yeah, thanks for tuning
into the podcast.
If you're an Apple, if you'rewherever you are, give us a
rating and I'm looking forwardto seeing you on the next
podcast.
Cheers you.
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