#72: Michael Shinall on P2E, GameFi and Board Game NFTs

Michael Shinall is the Design and Development Manager for CMON Inc, one of the largest and most successful board game companies in the world. Micheal also has over a decade of experience in the professional board game world, with a special focus on IP-related games.

In this conversation, we discuss:
- Moving from board games to NFTs
- Why CMON chose to build on FLOW blockchain
- How Play-To-Earn (P2E) is taking over gaming
- Second life in digital land
- OpenSea profile pic NFTs
- Moonsoon Digital partnership
- Daily routines and rituals of a game developer 
- The future of GameFi

CMON
Website: cmon.com
Twitter: @CMONGames
Facebook: @coolminiornot
Instagram: @cmongames

Michael Shinall
Twitter: @MichaelShinall

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Transcript

Matt Zahab: 0:07

Ladies and gentlemen, it's your host, Matt they have, and we have another incredible guest on tap for today's episode. Our guest is Michael Shinall, who has over a decade of experience in the professional board game world with a special focus on IP related games, including A Song of Ice and Fire Bloodborne Masters of the Universe, and is currently the design and development manager for CMON Inc, one of the most successful board game companies in the world. Without further ado, I'm very pleased to welcome to the crypto news podcast, Michael Chanel. Michael, welcome to the show.

Michael Shinall: 0:48

Hey, Matt, good to be here. And how are you doing today?

Matt Zahab: 0:50

I'm doing well to lovely sunny day in Toronto and just finished Canadian Thanksgiving had my turkey dinner, which is I always think it's a bit of a crime that we only have turkey dinner twice a year on Easter and Thanksgiving and maybe the odd Christmas but it's just so nice to all the fixings and everything. And that leads me to ask you you are in Canada right now and American in Canada in lovely. Never sunny Vancouver on the West Coast has been steady treatment.

Michael Shinall: 1:16

Oh yeah, I've been in Vancouver here for about a year and a half, almost two years. And every time you're saying Sunny, it's almost going like a little like PTSD for me, because we had our major heat waves this year, followed by the rain season finally coming back, but it looks like we're getting into our standard like Vancouver, wetter weather just overcast and chill. And you know, the sun going down at four or five in the afternoon. So things are getting back to normal. For better or worse.

Matt Zahab: 1:41

I know you are in Vancouver with your girlfriend, but on the subject of change, what are some of the biggest changes going from Atlanta over to Vancouver?

Michael Shinall: 1:51

Well, obviously, we're switching coasts, which actually that wasn't as big a change as I as I figured it would be. But of course moving to the US to Canada, you know, that's probably the biggest change there you just those little small differences, then, you know, you pick up where it's like everything is 90% the same, but that last little 10% can just kind of throw you off a little bit. And, you know, I don't want to get into too much of the other geopolitical stuff and everything there. Just, you know, every place has its pluses and minuses, its ups and downs. You know, but um, overall, you know, I'm happy I made the transition over here.

Matt Zahab: 2:23

I love that. That's awesome. Are we as bad as everyone says, with the a's and the the boots and all that kind of stuff?

Michael Shinall: 2:29

But you know, not really, but when it is prevalent, if someone it is very, very noticeable.

Matt Zahab: 2:36

Yeah.

Michael Shinall: 2:37

So, you know, you you see everyone they're like, oh, yeah, these these speak just like, you know, regular people and everything. And then and then all of a sudden, you know, someone just you know, breaks out a How you doing about the worry, like, oh, right, right. I'm in I'm in Canada,

Matt Zahab: 2:50

I know it's bad. It's I'm a culprit of that too. I'm sure I've dropped a couple too many A's on the pod just playing up playing up excuse me, growing up playing hockey and in the dressing room, like everyone's just, you know, insert swear word a how's everything going? It's just it's it's speech, but it is what it is. I'm so grateful to have you on today really excited for this episode, you are in a field that is absolutely taken off like wildfire. And, and you are at the forefront of it working for an incredible company in C Mon. Now, I want to get in your head a little What does your daily routine look like as the design and development manager of C mon Do you have any morning rituals or nighttime routines that you just can't live without?

Michael Shinall: 3:34

Well, so, you know, the pandemic definitely did shift things around. But we are a global company we have you know, individuals in Italy, Singapore, Brazil, the US. So we are already used to working remotely and having to focus on international timelines everything. So when the pandemic happened and everything just kind of shut down, largely our business was from the day to day unaffected, you know that we had the benefit of that being the location that I am though, my day usually will start around six to seven and be scattered throughout the day with talking to various offices going some words upwards of 10pm at night you know if I'm dealing with Singapore who is on a between 12 and 14 hour time difference depending on the time of year so I think it's very important you know, in this time as I'm sure a lot of people learn to keep an individual's schedule and keep a routine to that because you know if you don't have that it's very easy to get stir crazy and that was something that you know, I did even previously before everything locked down. So that skill kind of helped, you know, once the pandemic hit,

Matt Zahab: 4:36

and I'm sorry I'm nitpicking here, but any give me some specifics like me personally when I wake up, so I get a walk in just a quick half an hour walk around downtown Toronto will scoot down to the waterfront. Get about 20 503,000 steps in come back. Have a nice cup of Joe and boom, I feel like a machine I'm locked and loaded ready to go. As on the flip side, I have a bad habit where I wake up every morning I'll check the price of my bag at all, maybe check some NF T's. I'll check the 6 trillion emails I get from our team over in Europe and over in Asia. And that's what my goal is all cloudy, but you have any positive habits that our listeners can learn from you,

Michael Shinall: 5:12

oh, let's go with the positive in the negative then because I think just like you, when I wake up in the morning, you know, it becomes a routine of, let's check all the daily stuff here, you know, let's see, you know, is the market up is the market down. And you'll being over here on the West Coast, we get to see, you know, what happened with Europe and Asia overnight. You know, when you were talking to regards to crypto and you know, those aspects. And usually though, for me, as far as scheduled routines, I have a weekly list of things I try to get accomplished. I used to have a daily one. But no, I move that to just being a weekly like, these are the big milestone checkpoints that we have to do this week. And usually it depends on the day of the week, Monday and Tuesday, I'll try to get the kind of bureaucratic stuff out of the way from my job, you know, the meetings, the technical things, setting schedules throughout the week, and everything to usually try to afford the later days of the week to actually be my design and development time. But as far as the daily routine goes, usually I tried to get all of the you know, the kind of unfun stuff, you know, the meetings, the emails, all of that catch up, get that done in the morning. And then just because of the way I am position globally, compared to the rest of our offices, that usually is my mid day is when I kind of have a lull period, because our eastern timezone and American, our American workers are kind of finishing up their stuff being three to five hours ahead. And then our Singapore slash Italy, employees are kind of just starting their day. So my day is kind of strange, where the morning, you know, I'll have a big rush, midday is kind of my low period, which I'll usually take time to like go on my walk, or you know, some type of physical exercise to just keep things you know, moving and whatnot, and then the evenings will usually pick up again. So it's a very kind of a collective work schedule, one I would probably is not that great for my overall health, but that's what we're dealing right now. So, you know, that's what we've that's what we play with

Matt Zahab: 6:53

your job is incredibly creative. And you need to have your creative juices flowing and buzzing on all cylinders. When you get that period, like you talked about during the day where you can sketch out a couple hours and really make some shit happen in regards to being creative. Walking through the process, what do you do to get your mind locked and loaded. So you can use every single ounce of creativity that you have in there,

Michael Shinall: 7:20

that's kind of one of the important aspects that I feel is that if you're going to do a lot of creative ventures, then you need to set aside time to do that. And that's why in the mornings, I'll try to get all of the, again, the kind of procedural stuff out of the way, I'll have my meetings of our various team members, I'll send out the email. So we have to recap certain projects. Because once you get into that creative mindset, you never know how long that's gonna go, you know, some days, it might only be an hour, some days, you might be going like 10 plus hours on that. But the worst thing that can happen is like you're just in the middle of something, and you've got to stop to go and jump on a Zoom meeting, or you better stop to respond to some key emails. So that is one of my my suggestions that I can give to anyone that is trying to, you know, just kind of manage up their time, because I deal with a lot of creatives myself included there. And I know that time management is a skill that is is hard for even people that are set to schedule and very, you know, mathematical, logical based. And when it comes to creative, you never know what's going to strike. So getting as few obstacles out of the way early on. So those don't suddenly pop up and you know, interrupt that process, I think that's a really key thing to, to being kind of successful. And then it's just consistency, really, I mean, like, even those days, where you're just really, really not feeling it, at least try to get some ideas down, whether it's just putting to paper or taking some time even you're walking around just thinking about it. Because even if they're bad ideas, they're gonna help filter out you know, toward the good ones. So, you know, even if it's just a little bit per day doesn't have to, you know, don't force yourself to do like, man, I've got to do my six to eight hours today. Some days, it's just going to be like I did an hour and I can't do anything else. Okay, that's fine, you know, then go take care of other things you have to do take a walk, you know, find something else to do, don't don't force creativity.

Matt Zahab: 8:59

And then that, that leads me to the one of my favorite charts ever. The if you get 1% better every day, it comes out to what it is like 36% better every year or something crazy like that, you know, the compound chart where it's like 1% worse every day. Not that big of a difference. 1% better every day crazy difference. Love that always revert back that. I want to talk about the bread and butter of the show CMON now doing research for the show. I was like, What the heck is CMON? I've never heard of it. But then I look at the portfolio and all the accolades and I'm like, Okay, I've heard a couple of these bad boys and bad girls. Now I know what it's about. Why does the general public not know so much about C Mon? Like why isn't the parent company really hammered away that rant?

Michael Shinall: 9:43

Well, so you know, that's the thing, like, and I'm sure even now a lot of you know your listeners are going like why do they have this guy and you're talking about board games like I don't care about any of this, but it's just the same thing as any niche market. And you know, even when we're going to talk about like the greater aspects of like crypto and NF T's it's Still a niche market. I mean, I'm sure that that you've had many conversations with people that are much deeper vested in that about, you know, mass adoption and how, you know, we're just on the cusp, you know, we haven't even hit there yet, you know, especially all the recent news, but it's the same thing. You know, we're in niche markets. And we handle, you know, high end quality board games, you know, these are not the type of games that you're going to find, like, you know, monopoly or risk or any of that stuff that you're going to find in your mass market stuff. These are a catered products that you'll find in specialty stores and some of our products we do up in mass market, but they're very key to that audience. And over the last couple years, again, the pandemic has been terrible, most every regard, but one thing that it did cause is that you saw an uptick in people, you know, looking for that type of like, media, specifically, like analog board games. And that's because the socialization aspect, and that's something that most people are starved for, especially over the last two years. And this is one of those fundamental things that, um, you know, bridges people together. But even before that, you know, we were a kind of a booming market that has been just trending upwards and upwards and upwards. I mean, you look at Kickstarter, and you know, that platform, all of the most successful projects are board games, it takes up a huge amount of their portfolio. So this is a market that has just kind of existed in the background. But unless you're actively seeking it out, or you know about it, you know, you're just not going to know about it.

Matt Zahab: 11:20

Why have board games dominated the Kickstarter and Indiegogo? I guess in a larger bucket crowdfunding platforms, why do they just dominated since inception,

Michael Shinall: 11:30

I think it's because a combination of, it's very easy to produce an idea for a board game, and you're gonna see tons and tons of them out on crowdfunding, very few of them are going to be worth the time or actually make it to fruition, because it's a creative endeavor. And unfortunately, a lot of creative endeavors. People tend to neglect the actual, you know, business side of things. So you might have a really solid idea. But unless there's, you know, a fundamental like, you know, real like use case for it, or the ability to get manufactured. You know, like, you've got to first off talking about just general manufacturing, art assets, editing, proofing, all these things, these are all things that people don't factor in when they just have a really good idea that they like. But when it comes to the Kickstarter crowd, and you know, why board games like really, like tapped into it so much, there's a lot of factors, but I really do feel that it's some of the accessibility aspect, the person the personal aspect of it as well. A lot of these projects tend not to be a lot of like a risk or use case because like a board game, if it arrives late, like you know, let's say there's some huge manufacturing delay and you get your product to yours too late. That's fine. It's still the same board game that it was. But if you apply that same thing to a piece of tech, I will go into like a case where I ordered a smartwatch, when they were still a new thing off of Indiegogo many many years back. And delay after delay after delay caused it to show up after about four years people were didn't even think they're going to get the projects that we got anything was impressive. But in that four year time, that technology had been just comically outdated. So I end up having this novelty like future Rama risk communicator here. Whereas my Samsung Galaxy watch that I purchased two years ago did everything it did but better and more compact size

Matt Zahab: 13:18

course. Well said thanks. I actually didn't know that about board games, and his dominance on crowdfunding campaigns. And I thank you for that. I want to talk about C Mon. And crypto. Of course, this is a crypto podcast board games and NF Ts. A lot of people might think that's very weird. And men perhaps unorthodox collaboration, I definitely see the fruits behind it. And then I know you definitely do as well. And I'd love to pass the mic over to you and for you to explain why it will be the future.

Michael Shinall: 13:48

So I do agree with that, you know, when you pitch that to people, it seems like they're just worlds apart. You know, like, oh, what does an NF t have anything to do with the board game world. But when we start looking at it, you know, this is what we did as a company here, we've always tried to be at the forefront of innovation and new ideas and, you know, crypto and NF T's crypto is the wild west of you know, the financial world right now, NF T's are an even further frontier along in their, you know, even when NF T's first came up, I feel like I fully I understand NF T's to the best of my capabilities, which you know, is a fairly well and even then I go like okay, you know, some of this just some of that just boggles me, you know, you're seeing some of the the the prices that things are going for and everything. And when people make those arguments like well, you're not paying for anything that you're physically owning and everything like that's technically correct, but that's also true of a lot of things, but even then I could not have foreseen just the explosion that that specific sub markets have a current sub market would take. That is just, we truly like you never know what's going to happen these days. But getting into this What is an ft? What do NF T's in any way, shape or form have to do board games? Well, NF T's by their nature are a collectible aspect. That's kind of like one of the big draws for them. And you've seen this on you know, the other major outlets that are right now like crypto kit, kitties, you know, crypto punks, and everything. Why are these things desirable? Because people want them, you know, and yes, there's the there's the conceptual fact behind the DVS. You own this, it's, you know, a physical like ledger that's on the blockchain and everything here. But really, it comes down to, this is something that I own. It's a collectible board games and card games have. That's that was their inception and design, the day that the first baseball card collectible was made. So you can view this as like this is the grandfather of this industry. And you know, a lot of ways you can kind of use this, if we want to get like, you know, kind of like, you know, that lofty ideal in everything. This is like the old veteran of this of this industry, just coming back in seeing all the new kids with their newfangled NF T's and everything going like, Oh, you, this is what you guys are doing. Let the old master here show you how this is done. You see that a lot of crypto kitties is a good example. Nf t top shots, you know that whole thing. This is this is literally a collectible that you're making that you've taken. And you know, it's it's a digital collectible. But analog collectibles have existed, you know, for decades and decades and decades. And so what we're looking to do here with our specific, you know, market in the Neff T space, is to kind of bridge that gap.

Matt Zahab: 16:39

And you've got the eight that was money keep going? How are you going to bridge that gap? Because I'm curious, like if I again, I one of my most prized FTZ Coolcat. Everyone's saying, oh, Cool Cat be the you know the Pokemon of the metaverse, so on and so forth. I would love I'd love to play like some type of board game, whether it's monopoly or risk or something way outside or in between those two, but how is how are we going to bridge that gap between the traditional board game slash collectible market and the NFT is Wild West?

Michael Shinall: 17:09

Well, so let's actually look at the example that you just listed when you talk about Pokemon cards, you know, there have been some set of original like first edition Pokemon cards based set that have currently sold for upwards of like, 250,000 plus dollars, you know, for a full set and people buying those, not necessarily to have but as a speculative asset, right, you know, and you're seeing all the time when people buying, you know, trading card packs and whatnot, just to, and this is like it's becoming a more recognized thing. But this is something that people have done for, you know, again, decades, you know, going back, even just baseball cards, Magic, the Gathering cards, you know, any of these collectibles, and so when it comes to the NF T space, we're basically taking that and we are digitizing it, and bringing that to the kind of like the new medium that you know, people are experiencing. And we kind of feel that like, well, who better to bridge this gap, then, you know, a traditional board game company, I mean, if you have an NF T company that, you know, that's the first thing they've done their fledgling company, they're gonna come in it very hard for the digital space. But here, you know, one of the biggest things that we've talked about has been adoption, you know, NF T's are a big scary thing to people, and we take like, the average person, and you explain the concept of an NF T to it, they're gonna, they're not going to know what you're talking about, like, Wait, so it's a digital picture that I don't really own. And then you have to get to the conversation about blockchains. And then you have to get into the conversations about you know, blockchains of Ledger's. And then cryptocurrency as a whole, and it's a lot of daunting things to people. But from our perspective, if you just take it to someone to like, Hey, this is a digital trading asset here, you know, just like baseball cards, or Pokemon cards that you use to collect everything, that's a much smaller bite that people can understand. And now they're in the mentality, like, Oh, I get what this is. So we have a crowd that, you know, they can honestly purchase this as like a product and get their cool, like, you know, trading cards and everything, and not even really understand the concept of blockchains or even in a team in general. But they understand that they have a really cool collectible that they have yet digital. But again, we've that's nothing new. So that's something that they can understand. Meanwhile, the crowd that is into NF T's that understands, you know, exactly how the flow system works, you know, when I say like, you know, oh, this is based on the, you know, the flow blockchain, you know, we're working through a theory and everything, the things that they the crowd that understands it, can see the value here, like, you know, when you purchase, you know, when you open one of our NFT packs, and you open up, you know, oh, this is the first set printing, serial number 001 out of 999 of this specific NFC, you're going to get excited because those numbers actually mean something and you're like, oh, oh, I just you know, I opened up some value here. But meanwhile, you have a collector, they're going to view that exact same thing. They're gonna go, oh, this is really cool. I got a, you know, a first edition print, first run of this card. Those are universal concepts that even if you don't know anything about NF T's or blockchains, you're gonna get excited by as long as you have some baseline understanding of collectibles.

Matt Zahab: 20:14

And I feel like everyone back from playing in the playground as a kid, you know, trading Peck shiny rocks to Pokemon cards, you yo tomo, gotchas, you name it, everyone knows that in collectibles, there's always some type of scarcity. And now in blockchain, it's just absolutely through the roof. Why? Why did you in the team want to get into NF? TS? It seems like a pretty straightforward answer. And of course, there's just a multitude of economic and social aspects behind it. But what was the big aha moment where you're like, Okay, this is getting too big, we have to attack this industry?

Michael Shinall: 20:49

Well, I can actually, like, you know, I will cite that to people that are higher up than me having really good ideas about pushing this through. And, you know, they're kind of like, you know, the initial visionaries behind it. Because crypto and NF T's this is something that we track as a company, and individuals as well, you know, we have many people in our, you know, just staying abreast of, you know, the current trends and what is currently possible in the market. But it didn't really cross over to us of like, oh, this is something that we could jump into. And all of a sudden, you know, one day one of our era tech savvy, higher ups and whatnot goes, Hey, we should explore this in that T space. You know, this is, this seems like something we should cross over. And then you know, all of a sudden, it becomes reality. It's like, you know, we are in a position here as a global company, and you're one of the forerunners of you know, where we are that we can actually explore this space. And then it becomes a conversation that, well, if we don't do this, someone else's, you know, and that's, and that's the matter for it. So we started looking into this, we did our full research here, you know, check checking, you know, what's currently popular, what are the what have what have been the failures, what have been the success stories here, and, you know, then we devote our research to, you know, finding out the best method of making this a reality.

Matt Zahab: 22:02

I love that. Tell me about the partnership with monsoon digital, I love the name too. It's such it just clean rolls off the tongue nice sounds like a company that has some oomph behind it like some history to match made in heaven. Tell me a little bit more about that.

Michael Shinall: 22:16

So when it comes to monsoon they're handling basically any of the the full blockchain and I guess technical NFT assets side of things. So we're bringing our expertise in, and our assets into this, you know, of our partnerships that we have, you know, with different IPs and our own internal IPs and products and things. So we're bringing our expertise as far as our expertise and resources, I should say. Thanks expertise in making a viable, like, collectible product, that, well, I can speak a little bit about this, you know, right now is a collectible. And that's that's kind of the the game behind it. Okay, you know, it's trading cards. Now, we do have some roadmaps that going into the future and hopefully I don't get into any extreme trouble talking about this. But you know, we do we are exploring, like gaming aspects, digital gaming aspects of it, because we're a game company. I think that's kind of, you know, the worst kept secret here. That's something we're obviously going to explore. But, you know, that's what we're bringing in from our end. Meanwhile, monsoon is the one that is handling the technical aspects of you know, again, working through the flow, Blockchain, making sure the back end and everything there is proper that, you know, all of the technical aspects and things like that are handled in efficient and basically, you know, taking up all those things and unfortunately, it's not a lot that I can comment on because that's when we're getting to the technical side of things that even myself as someone you know, who likes crypto and NF T's that's getting into the actual like dark technological wizardry there that I can't comment on without sounding like an idiot

Matt Zahab: 23:47

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Michael Shinall: 25:33

it really comes down to two primary reasons, and neither of them are super exciting, really. But the most important one was, we wanted to pick one, you're, you're correct, we had a bunch of different like options out there. And we did meticulously combing through which one would be best for us. But we end up settling on flow, because the primary reason is, is is an established system. And that's important for building like user confidence and everything, because we are newbies coming into this space. And you know, there's always a lot of risks and associated with that. Because, you know, just like with any like, you know, crypto currency or whatnot, there's a billion billion different ones out there, and most of them are going to fail. So you can run the risk of you know, yeah, you can you can try to hit your moonshot here, you know, yeah, you know, I'm going to take my risk here. But that's what we want to do, we want to create a sustainable and viable product that is going to last in the space. And to do that, we wanted to pick one of the most like reliable platforms that we could work off of. And so that's why we ended up settling on flow. That was one of the primary reasons. The other is, of course, for the environmental impact as well, because that's, you know, that is a big, you know, factor when it comes and a big topic for debate when it comes into the crypto space in general. And that was the secondary reason that we went to flow as well as because they are addressing the environmental impact of you know, the entire space and they've got some, they've got some good means about how they're dealing with it.

Matt Zahab: 27:02

And the third is if gas prices are the worst thing on the planet.

Michael Shinall: 27:08

Absolutely. But hopefully that will get sorted out and you know, even in six months to a year from now, things might be completely different. So we'll just have to see, but you okay, we do have, you know, the Etherium quandary right now, but that's a universal thing that's going on right now. So

Matt Zahab: 27:24

are you a little side note here? We'll go back to C mon in a couple minutes. Are you bullish on the sort of alt NFT? ecosystems? Like any thing salon or polka dot based because again, I'm a big open see guys theorem. Anytime I want to do something fine. It just it's you shut it here to 100 bucks sometimes. I was trying to mint Metaverse last week 1400 bucks and gas not happening. Right? You bullish on any of these new ones.

Michael Shinall: 27:51

So polka.is actually, in general has interested me for quite a long time, I've never done like a huge amount of them. solando I have zero experience looking into aside from just you know, when I see them pop up in the news feeds and whatnot, you're checking them out, but I've not done any amount of research on them. Polka Dot has been very interesting, just from even a year ago, just all the where they have come. And I know that's true, they have a lot of the different no chains and everything out there. But I feel that that one's one that will actually stick around. So they're ones I do have my eye on. And you know, open sea is one of those things that I've also been trying to limit my exposure to on a personal level, because it is one of those things that you can, I'm going to make a pun here that I hate but you can absolutely drown in it. If you if you allow yourself the time there. And frankly, there are too many other things. Also even just relate to the crypto space that I have to dedicate my time to and I just again, it's like we talked about way the beginning it's time management, you have to know your limitations here. And that's that's one that I will tackle at some point in the future, but I can't be now

Matt Zahab: 28:58

I'm Michael You and I are in the same yacht year about two months ago, three months ago, we'll call it really April tonight and I was a full fledged degenerate addict. If there was a program I would have checked myself into it. And now I'm getting over it I'm you know, maximum half an hour a day on it kind of thing just to keep up with everything. I'm also similar to you probably very overexposed, but how addicting is that platform? Like did you ever think that you would be a DJ like me on open See,

Michael Shinall: 29:26

she's it's just, you know, you you go on there and even just from a speculation, you know, a side of things. It's, that's the worst because you see something and we go in there almost just like it's roulette. You know, I'm just going okay out there, you know, 33 You know, 33 black on this one here and just see what happens because you just never know. I mean, even a year ago, if you were to sit there and tell me that, you know, you would have multimillion dollar NF T's I'd be like No, that's that's that's crazy. You're not gonna see anything like that. I mean, yeah, it might be popular but not like that, and now it seems every time, every time the internet just wants to prove me wrong when I say a statement like that. So, you know, I'm I'm sure that's gonna boost the market up is every time I have a doubting moment and don't invest or don't, you know, look into something, it's going to just keep moving up and everything. But of course, as you know, the second you put money into it, you're going to enter your little freefall there because that's just how these things work.

Matt Zahab: 30:24

It does. I'm also very curious to hear your thoughts on this sort of NFT coin movement that's taking place right now, cyber cons, one of the most famous and Og NFT communities, that is built on the Ethereum blockchain, getting called Cyber coins, they released banana token. And if you had one of the OG Genesis, I believe you're making, I think it comes out to 500 bucks a day, I could be wrong on that. It's something like that people spend millions of dollars a year and rent a property on Airbnb and don't make 500 bucks a day. Meanwhile, these people bought cyber combs for only a couple grand, you know, months down the road, and they're making $500 of residual income every day. Now, every other project is releasing a coin, I do think there will be a slippery slope, I do think that a lot of these coins that have zero, utility will bring the project down, that will be a problem. But I'd love to hear your two cents on the subject.

Michael Shinall: 31:20

You know, every time I hear something in relation to the crypto space and the NFT space, it sounds just crazy to me, and I circles back into the whole, like, you know, why I feel we're still in the wild west and mass adoption is, you know, a while a ways away, which is, again, cycles into why I think that, you know, our unique stance in the markets, you know, can help bridge that gap. And that's one of the most important I think aspects of our project is that we are kind of creating the the layman's bridge here. So people that have no idea about any of this stuff, sometimes even existing, still have a means to kind of, you know, just tread the waters and work their way up, you know, start the kiddie pool, you know, like, I'm okay, I'm playing some packs, I'm getting some cool like digital pictures here and everything, and just start treading the water out here until they're ready to swim out here in the greater crypto and in a T space. But frankly, when it comes to anything related to NF T's in crypto, if you were to just to tell me a random sentence here, you know, it could be completely fake, it could be completely real. I'm, I can't fully dismiss it. Because that's the point where we're at where everything that sounds insane is actually the reality. I remember just talking a year or so ago, when I was getting pitched manna. And it's like, oh, well, they're selling, you know, digital properties here. And this is something that people you know, it's still early, but people are going to really explode by this. And I was like, that sent what like, are you saying like Second Life type, stuff like that, that sounds insane. Like, no. And then looking back, I'm like, I should have probably given that a little bit more credit there and least checked into it. And that's how it feels like almost any projects here is like you just you never know what's going to actually take off. But that is also you know, incredibly, why isn't it is important to do your research, check out these things. Because for everything that is going to be successful, there's going to be 10 to 20 times amount of stuff. That's just insane. That sounds like a good idea. But you need to actually check in to make sure it's you know, stable,

Matt Zahab: 33:24

you just blew my mind there. That was the first time I've ever heard of digital and being the spot where humans go for their second life. I'm flying flabbergasted right now I need to know, who was the originator of this concept. And just wow, it was all I can say. Imagine, imagine I'm 26 years old. Imagine and hopefully I live to 168 years down the road. When I finally kick the can, you know, tearing up the old age home. And my time comes to an end. And I somewhere in the sandbox with my you know, with my fellow cool cats and lazy lions, like who told you about this,

Michael Shinall: 34:03

you know, I can't even cite an exact it's like space for it. It's just from, you know, looking at different podcasts looking at different YouTube stuff. Because, as I as we talked about, Matt, like, I probably have invested way too much time when I was super into this, like, you know, just getting information dump after information dump. And, you know, that's led to some really good turnaround stuff. And I'm glad that I did it because now I at least have I'm applying it, you know, here who would have thought, you know, a year and a half ago that this the crypto stuff and the NF T thing would actually come into play in my you know, work. And now it has but I think that you know, everyone should be educated to some degree about crypto and NF T's because every industry is going to start incorporating in some capacity. So at least having some baseline knowledge is important.

Matt Zahab: 34:45

Any hot tastes on that and what what do you think's the next industry? It's just gonna come into crypto and be like, Wow, we're taking this over.

Michael Shinall: 34:52

Oh, it's definitely gonna be collectibles and board games and I feel that even then the eSports arena has started, I feel it's going to ramp up even more as time goes on. But frankly, that's a, that's something I even feel like I can't comment on because it's going to be a surprise, whatever it is, it's going to be something that no one saw coming, because that's just how these things have been playing out. So it's really is just a roller coaster. Just, if you get lucky, you might get in on the front end, and you know, you'll be ahead of everyone else. But otherwise, you just enjoy the ride and see where this craziness is kind of going.

Matt Zahab: 35:26

i That's a great example in my sort of analogy to eSports and blockchain gaming taking over traditional gaming is akin to and similar to how everyone is now an investor right before the pandemic before March 2020. Not everyone invested right? Especially my peers, kids my age even younger than me, the Gen Z years, the kids in high school and uni right now, they were working their minimum wage jobs most of the time, because that's all society has to offer when you're young, usually unless you have connections, and then the pandemic hit, and there was nowhere to work. The government was given the money they were 2345 If you're lucky 1020 axing their money that they got from the government, and then they're like, Okay, everyone can be an investor. It's just in school that they don't teach you that, hey, anyone can do this. Unless you actually try it yourself and learn from people. It's all it's all about. How do you manage your time and how much money What is your output moving forward over to blockchain gaming I've tons of friends who are still playing fortnight, FIFA, Madden cod, you name it, spending hours and hours, dozens of hours a week? And what do they have to show for just a good time? Right? It's not a bad thing. But is it a good thing? Maybe not. Now you have this play to earn economy, you have game fi blockchain gaming, where people like are playing x infinity F one delta times so rare, and they're making 1000s of dollars a week, and actually earning residual income? I'm so so beyond bullish on this. And, uh, no, man, I just can't wait, it's gonna be a lot of fun.

Michael Shinall: 36:53

The one thing I will comment on there is that if you look, a lot of the fundamentals that have existed in gaming, for better or for worse, like loot boxes are one of those mixed bag things where, you know, and they've had a lot of controversy about, like, you know, is this just pushing a gambling addiction on people will not, but, you know, a lot of the better side of these concepts have existed in gaming, you know, since gaming's inception, and it's very easy to see how they will port over into the NFT. In the greater crypto space. Once again, real life example was when you look at like, um, Counter Strike, you know, they had weapons skins, that, you know, you would randomly get from your loot boxes that, you know, sell for five and six figures. Well, if I were to explain that as Oh, that's something that's happening in the NFT space. People go like, Oh, yeah, sure, of course it is. And then I go, that's something that happened in video games 1520 years ago. It's like, Oh, hmm. And so that's really something that you can do is start looking at Yo, especially from a gaming side of things, look at a lot of these, like systems that are starting to develop in the NFC and crypto space. And you can trace their roots all the way back to you know, not even just digital gaming, but analog gaming. And that's how I feel like we are, we are bridging that gap.

Matt Zahab: 38:07

Michael, this has been absolutely incredible. I can talk to you all day, I had an absolute blast. A couple more questions, before we let you go. Going back to C Mon, tell me about the platform launch and other things that the general public can look forward to coming up.

Michael Shinall: 38:20

So unfortunately, on that aspect, I'm limited into what I can mention. But we do have our social media pages that we have, again, with our monsoon tie ins, all of our information will be available on our website, we'll probably have our Facebook, you know, blasts out there to keep people up to date there. And that includes going to be just more information about the project, a project roadmap for the future, because we want to take one of those stances where we don't want to promise the world out of the gate. You know, this is definitely something that this is a new, as we keep saying, you know, many times during this, this is a new frontier and a new frontier and a new frontier. So we want to have an established foundation for everything that we do to make sure that our core fundamentals are really set that everything is working as it should, it's proper, and then we can start expanding on that because I feel that you know what's something you definitely don't want to do is promise the world and then not be able to deliver on any of those you need to have a solid foundation for moving forward in the future because again, we want to build something that is long lasting here. So therefore all the foundations are that much more important, where we need to make sure everything is working properly that we've made the right decisions that if we find some things that we're not happy with that we mitigate and we correct them early on, you know where when we still have the capabilities of doing so before you know something unfortunate happens.

Matt Zahab: 39:45

Michael absolute treat thank you so much for jumping on the pod this has been incredible before we let you go can you please let our listeners know where they can find you and CMON and monster and digital on socials and online.

Michael Shinall: 39:56

Alright, well we're available on all our social media platforms you can find As on Twitter on Facebook and then we have our official webpage of C mon comm cmo in comm you can find our digital tab there which will actually really link you to our any of the information we have on monsoon so any of our new splash screens and to go out you can sign up there and then also we have our newsletter that you can sign up for it so basically stay up with all that information.

Matt Zahab: 40:21

Amazing what about you any Twitter for you?

Michael Shinall: 40:23

You know, you can follow my twitter account I'll post something on there maybe once every four six months and it's going to be board game related most likely so you know I can't really push that out there.

Matt Zahab: 40:33

Sounds good Michael. Absolute treat really appreciate you coming on definitely would love to speak to you in a couple months down the road once you want in Monster and how those incredible announcements out but until then, thanks again and we'll talk soon appreciate it

Michael Shinall: 40:46

Matt is great being on thank you for the time

Matt Zahab: 40:48

folks hope you enjoyed this episode with Michael Chanel from C mon and monsoon digital crazy crazy craziness board games and NF TS who would have thought but it's common NF T's and everything. Get your popcorn ready they're taking over the world. As always, we're dropping on Mondays and Thursdays I really appreciate you listening if you did enjoy this please do subscribe it would mean the world to myself and our amazing team at crypto news who I also have to shut out love you all appreciate you all the listeners love you all and appreciate you all to stay safe keep growing those bags and we will keep in touch bye for now.