They say that game developers know more about human nature than psychologists, but gamers themselves are a close second if we can look at why we enjoy certain games over others.
My guest this week is Sam Simmons, Co-Founder at Mintpass: a collecting experience that makes your travels a part of your digital identity. Previously he spent 9 years rising up to become the President at PokerGo, a world-leader in poker television. But his resume started where a lot of web3 builders start: MMOs.
In this episode we hear about stories from Sam’s years spent around the highest level players in poker, reverse engineering WoW and other MMOs and why they’re so addictive, and gut check the difference between fandom and community (sneak peak: most web3 “communities” are more like fan bases).
People listening: I hope you enjoy this long overdue episode.
They say that game developers know more about human nature than psychologists, but gamers themselves are a close second if we can look at why we enjoy certain games over others.
My guest this week is Sam Simmons, Co-Founder at Mintpass: a collecting experience that makes your travels a part of your digital identity. Previously he spent 9 years rising up to become the President at PokerGo, a world-leader in poker television. But his resume started where a lot of web3 builders start: MMOs.
In this episode we hear about stories from Sam’s years spent around the highest level players in poker, reverse engineering WoW and other MMOs and why they’re so addictive, and gut check the difference between fandom and community (sneak peak: most web3 “communities” are more like fan bases).
People listening: I hope you enjoy this long overdue episode.
Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of people talking. I'm one of the people talking Alex Mexicot. And as always, I have another person talking with me today. My guest today is Sam Simmons. So Sam is the co founder at MintPass, which is a collecting experience that makes your travels part of your digital identity. And previously spent nine years rising up all the way to become the president and is now an advisor at PokerGo, which is a world leader. In poker television. So personally, I know you're a fan of poker, a fan of gaming. We'll get into that a lot today. Um, topics going to be all around the gambling risk taking fandom. I know we talked about a little bit gamification and like many of my guests I mentioned before, wish I was recording in our prep talk. So I've been looking for someone. So thanks Sam, for joining the show. Yeah, awesome.
Sam:Thanks for having me to be a person talking. Super happy to be here. I mean, these are all, these are all areas that I'm really passionate about and really in a number of ways brought me to where I am today with, uh, with this new profession in the wild, weird world of web three. So
Alex:I'm excited to chat through it. Yeah. And that's, um, I mean, that's kind of the focus of the show, right? We talk web three, web three, web three, and a lot of times it gets into the technology and the finance and that's where the conversation stops, but web three is becoming an umbrella term like internet, like everything's an internet business, so I love to do here is. Bring people on and talk about things that aren't directly related to web3, but obviously web3 could ultimately impact. So, um, I, I was just looking at your background and you spend a ton of time in the poker world, which it seems like a lot of people in web3 have interest in that, either professionally or casually. And. Um, I'm sure you have an incredible amount of stories from your time there. So I'm curious just to kick us off. What's one of the craziest moments that you remember that you either live streamed at PokerGo or even something where you were personally live at the event?
Sam:Yeah, so it's actually a great question. And it's a timely question because you know how on Facebook your, your memories of years past and will resurface like old things that you posted. I had one surface last week, which was a clip from a cash game that I personally played in, in one of our shows, I think probably back in like 2017 or 2018. And I don't need to go over the specifics of the hand, but it basically long story short, it was like a. A 5, 000 pot, which for, for others, we streamed wasn't a lot, but for me to cascade, that was quite a bit, uh, pretty massive pot by my bank roll. And it ended up if, if memory serves, the hand was something like queen Jack versus queen 10. And I had the queen Jack and the board run out was, um. Queen queen 10 X. So it was, it was the, my opponent's full house against my, uh, my trips. And I was just, and I, to be honest, it was like towards the end of the session, I had, uh, a beer or seven in my system, so like, I'm like, I'm going, I'm going out the night of winter. Like there was just no question, regardless of the money was going to get in, but then the, uh, the, the river comes and I spiked the jack. To give me full house over full house and I, and I rake the pot. So I had that. I'll send it to you after this. I had, I had that clip on stream, which was like my personal highlight moment. Uh, and then beyond that, we've had like random, a lot of people might remember the ACEs versus ACEs hand from the million dollar one drop back in. There's actually before my time in poker go, but I was a poker fan for a long time before. So I was there at that tournament. Uh, so moments like that stick out to me, just like I'm kind of an odds nerd when it comes to a lot of things that I do in life. And when there's these weird anomalies of just the odds, not playing out as they should, especially when I'm either on the winning end of it, or even just an impartial bystander, it's really fun to watch.
Alex:Oh man. Yeah. It's. Even just from the outside, aside from the odds game, I, what I love about poker and watching poker, which in my experience has mainly been on like ESPN, you know, the traditional networks, but I know there's a ton of applications out there now doing live streaming, just the juxtaposition of complete stoic calmness to just the odds and what's going on in the table. And then people feel like just letting go because you basically need to. Not show any emotion so that you can have the best advantage. And then you have sometimes tens, hundreds of thousands of dollars in the pot on the table and just these people's crazy plays. I just think it's the most hilarious spectator sport in that juxtaposition between the
Sam:two. It is. And it's, it's, it's much easier said than done having put a lot of hours into it myself. And I remember some of the first tournaments I was playing, you know, I've, whether, whether you have a big hand or you're bluffing, you end up betting and you. You get the shakes. And at least, at least the good part about it is either way. Like, you don't know if you have a good hand or bad hand because I shake either way. Yeah. Uh, and over the years it's gotten for my own purposes, it's lessened, but I still have like the holy shit, holy shit, holy shit. Internal dialogue. Whenever I'm like running like a really tough bluff line, especially just like, there's no way this actually works. And sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. But I think there's like a really key theme, which I always try to carry with me. And I know the best in the business are able to do it quite well, which is To to detach yourself and to not be results oriented. Like at the end of the day, like, and this applies to so much in life and poker is no different where your job is to make the best decision possible with the perfect information. And once you're able to boil it down to exactly that in a given time, like I'm not as worried about what comes up on the river because ultimately my decision is this. Decision only, which is making the best decision possible with the information available at hand. And inherently by the nature of how poker works as a game, that information changes over time. But all you can do is use what you have available to try to optimize your outcomes.
Alex:I love that you said that because I remember seeing something. Um, I think it was a really big play in the playoffs or the super bowl or something for football. And it was. I think what happened is with the information that was available, the coach made a very stupid decision, but the outcome was great. So he looks like a genius. And I think that's a great example of your outcome base. That person looks like a genius, but if you are process based, the odds made no sense for you to make that decision, given that data. And I think that's a great way, great life lesson in general of you have to just. Make the decisions that you have with the information you have. And sometimes the odds are ever in your favor and you make a decision based on those odds and it doesn't go your way. And that's, it sucks, but you made the right decision still. I mean, hindsight's 20, 20. So that's a great, I guess, life lesson from poker of one of many, I'm sure.
Sam:Yeah. And it's an important point you're bringing up. Cause that is the most common mistake. I think a lot of new players make is that, I mean, results oriented is the, the specific term to describe it, but it goes both ways in that there are times where, you You know, you, you get your chips in the middle and the cards fall where they may, which in this case, despite you being a heavy underdog ended up working out in your favor, just by sheer luck. And it's easy to say, well, look at me. Like I'm a good poker player now. And on the flip side, there's times where you may get your chips on the middle in a, in a good spot, but the cards just don't work out for you. And it's easy to say, dang it. I shouldn't have gone all in there when in reality. You should be wanting to get it all in in that way every single time because you know that over time there'll be a return to the mean in that your luck all won't always run that bad and inherently there's running good versus running bad and it can feel like it can feel like death sometimes when you string together a series of tournaments or a series of weeks or months where you just run bad over and over again and you ask yourself like what is wrong with me but you have to have trust in the odds and trust that it all even died over time which inherently just by the nature of how
Alex:statistics work it does you. Another good point. You kind of have to be in the game long enough to see the odds really flipping into your favor, and it could either drastically flip in your favor and I'm like, okay, I'm done playing or you're down bad and you feel like you need to stay in, but as long as you're making those right decisions and the odds are in your favor, then yeah, like you said, history, historically, the odds should come in your favor that reminds me a lot of. A lot of people who won in the last bull market, that can be very dangerous. When you hear the stories of, yeah, I mortgaged, like did a reverse mortgage on my house, went all in on doge coin and it worked out and it's like. That wasn't a good decision despite the outcome. There's a lot of that.
Sam:Yeah. It's the two words that we use a lot in poker are variance. So just inherently for, for positive and negative, you're going to see upswings and downswings powered by sheer luck, as opposed to skill or decision making, but you combat that with volume. And that's like, that's sort of the. The brutal dichotomy that often takes place in poker is when you're running bad, the best thing you can do is A, well obviously you want to continue to educate yourself, and if you see yourself getting into bad spots, that's not running bad, that's just you being a bad poker player, but if you're getting it in good and losing or just kind of falling victim to sheer luck at times, The best thing you could do to combat that is to continue playing like the worst thing you could do is, you know, stop and give up because like inherently it's supposed to turn and if you're if your odds have proven to be in your favor means you're making the right decisions along the way, but on the flip side, there's times where you like you may run really good just just and that's to win tournaments. Oftentimes you just have to run hot and you see these anomalies like in the world series of poker main event where it's astronomically small odds to break through a tournament field of 10, 000 people if you're a good player, but imagine seeing like a final table is to your watching and it's like, how the hell did they make it seven days through this brutal field of a grind playing 12 hours a day and managed to come out another side when they're making decisions like that. And lo and behold, they get to the final table and you see them punt it off on some dumb decision. And then the reality is they were making those dumb decisions all along the way. The variants just aligned to their liking where they ran hot at the right time. So, and that's, and that's the beautiful part of it is like, there's, there's room for that to happen. And that's a, that's a valid outcome in the game. But again, it goes back to like, If you're wanting to make a profession out of it, if you're wanting to succeed at it in the long term, you have to mitigate for those things and to your point that applies very, very much to the to the web free space at large of seeing these micro examples of extremes and not knowing that you can't rely on that as truth in that. There will always be anomalies that take shape, and it's about winning through sound fundamentals in the long term, versus finding those flash in the pan anomalies in the short
Alex:term. Yeah, wow. I, I, and just coming back to the game example, I find games that have an element of strategy and odds and, Left brain, like you can, you can win, you can be strategic, but then also just pure luck. And you sometimes just have to take the hand that you have in poker, literally, and do the most that you can with it and wait for when the odds are in your favor and then go really, really hard because you understand the strategy of the game. And I think I was hearing for a while that. For, um, for a while, backgammon was that type of game for hedge fund managers. It was really popular with them because it had that element of strategy and luck. And you had to take the, the luck aspects and make it in your favor, as opposed to something like chess, which is purely strategic. And with, with poker, I see that there's obviously a luck component. There's obviously strategic component. And I'd see poker is maybe more of like to use gaming term, which we'll get into later. More of a PVP type of game. You're playing other people at the table where I think a cousin of it, blackjack is more of a PVE or player versus dealer sometimes. And even the dealer can be on your side. But, uh, um, yeah, I guess my, most of my experience is with. You just go to the casino. It's more readily available. Blackjack. And what's terrifying about blackjack is there's almost always the exact right move just to stay within the odds. And if you don't do that right move, everyone at the table is pissed off at you because then you've, you've messed up their hand and messed up the deck that's bringing up their card next. I don't know if you've had any experience with blackjack or just really
Sam:stuck with poker too much, unfortunately. And it's funny. I was my, my younger brother, I'll give him a shout out. His name is Jack. He's getting married. Next weekend. And we were out a few weeks ago for his, he's, he's pretty low key guy, but we did like a bachelor party dinner type of thing. And he's not a gambler. I very much am a gambler. And that was like my one requirement that we're going to, I will, I will pay your buy. And we're going to sit down at the table and we're going to grind blackjack for three hours, like any good bachelor party. So, so we sat down and we're playing and it was, it was a fun, it was a fun exercise for me because there's, there's certain spots like, Uh, you know, 16 with a dealer showing a 10 and it's like always or never, like it's, it's just boilerplate and he's like, well, explain that to me why and like trying to get me to rationalize it. Well, that's just the way it is. Like, that's just how the odds work. Like if there is a book that we all cite in the book would say that this is the right thing to do because of this. I don't exactly know what that because is, but I promise you it's the right thing to do. So it's, and I personally find this, this is like kind of how I find games to be fun and what attracts me so much to games like poker is. Games that can be solved versus not solved and the variance is ultimately what makes it fun and you can think about any, any game from like, you know, the gambling sense to even, even titles like MMORPGs, like World of Warcraft, where there is like a certain linear trajectory to the gameplay itself, but then thinking about like the Chance based mechanisms around loot drops and things of that nature where there's like those and there's, there's, there's maybe predatory, predatory undertones to some of those mechanics in, in like casual games, uh, with unsuspecting people buying loot boxes and things like that and driving microtransaction off of it. But I think that adds a really like the whole element of unpredictability, I think adds a lot to gaming and poker is like the most extreme sense of that, but I think that applies to a number of different. Mechanisms that we choose to engage with from a gaming standpoint.
Alex:Yeah, I just getting more into the gaming side of things. I, like I mentioned, it's like a PvE versus PvP type of thing. What I always, I always liked the PvP side of things because. The environment that you're playing in is constantly changing and it's a game theoretic type of thing. I'm doing this. And when I do this, this person does this and they think I'm going to do this. So they make me think that they're going to react this way. And it's like this whole game thing. And it's way more intense than doing something like a raid and an MMO where the mechanics are the exact same every single time and the game part of it. Is almost like being the first one to do that, right. And figure out the mechanics and figure out a solution to those mechanics. After you figure out those mechanics, you're just executing. You have a role and you just execute. And that's fun for some people. But what I loved about PVP is like, here are the certain situations that can happen. Here are some common themes that can happen. And here, when those things happen, I have to react with these particular things. And that kind of reactionary aspect, there's, it's way more open ended. And I think that's why there are more. Diehard poker fans than there are maybe blackjack because blackjack there's almost always like an exact right move Given whatever the other side is doing and you have enough time to react there. So at least from my perspective, that's how I'd parallel the things and what I
Sam:think it's interesting. It's interesting thought. And I'll say like, in terms of like my tape, like PVE table games, I personally don't love blackjack normally, unless it's like our entire group is taking up the table where if someone does something stupid, no one gives a shit. But like, and this happened in that same story. Like we literally sat down at the table. And I'm guiding my brother and naturally he does the exact opposite of what I told him to do and it worked out that like the run out of the shoe would have helped some other guy and he just like lost his mind and stormed off after we're there one hand, which is which was ended up being for the best. But it has a certain level of like Um, a, I don't want to say negativity, but inherently there's like a me like if it's a, it's a zero sum game, if you will, where by by someone else winning or losing, it impacts someone else when you're losing and if that person wins and other person loses, there's a certain animosity friction that takes place. So I tend to prefer table games, which have much worse odds, but have much less happiness and like fun factor, like three card poker is like my guilty pleasure because everyone, everyone's decisions are made independently. And if. If the dealer loses everyone else wins and everyone else can win together. You can be happy if someone If someone hits their flush or straight flush, especially without it having any impact on my outcomes at all So like everyone kind of celebrate everyone else What do you think in that kind of setting for me is like I go to the casino to go have fun and dick around for a few hours, not to like be mad and hate everyone around me. So that's typically what I target. But to your point, I think the big difference in poker and what I think comes into play and what you described in terms of like the strategic element of me versus them is the leveling effect that takes place. And I think that's again, back to like what differentiates good from bad poker players, not bad, but new poker players where a new poker player will always wonder, what should I do in this spot? And it's like, what is, what is based on what I have? What should I be doing? Where the best in the world will say, what should I be doing based upon what my opponent thinks I'm doing based upon what my opponent thinks? Yeah. I think they're doing versus and that goes to such great lengths of like the different level to the to the seventh layer of like he thinks I think he thinks I think he thinks I think so thus I should be doing this so this is the mechanics it's one thing like to talk about like like traditional gaming around who can click faster and some outcomes and you're talking about a certain skill level but in the game of poker it is like it's it strips everything away to the cerebral which I think is unlike any other thing. Game sport out there in its uniqueness. Yeah.
Alex:It's the classic, um, what princess bride quote from the guy who's like, I know, you know, that I know that this poison, so this one it's yeah, that's the classic aspect and what's very different about poker from others. Like you said, it's very cerebral because you have all the time in the world. To try and figure out what that other person's thinking. It's not reactionary. So you can sit there and just go through these mind games, both internally and trying to trick the other person and these bluffing games. Yeah. It it's nuts. How complex. It can get there. So I can imagine it's going to be super fun, especially with the stakes being super high, if you're that part of that kind of disposition, I I'm the type of person where losing hurts a hell of a lot more than winning feels good. So I can only take so much at certain stakes, but I, you know, it depends, depends who you're with. And I think I agree if you were with a bunch of different friends, it's. Yeah,
Sam:and it's, it's what you're describing is like the, I think, I think the proper like scientific term is, um, loss avoidance bias or bias towards loss avoidance in 300 that you own means a lot more to you than 300 that you could get. And so like it hurts, it hurts more to lose that 300 than it does to win 300 incrementally. So it's like, it's, it's, it's a very valid thing. And um, I like, I, I'm of the same mindset in that I, especially now that I'm not playing as much these days, I'm not going out to win money. I'm going out to just have fun. And I want to feel good when I leave. Regardless of how much I win or lose. So I'm never gambling more than I feel comfortable with. And again, back to like web three parallels, I think that's where a lot of people go wrong from like an investment standpoint as well, of like playing above their stakes in a, in a sense of, uh, having to like being over leveraged in, uh, digital assets and, uh, shit coins and JPEGs and stuff like that. And it's, there's a lot, there's lessons that can be learned from the last cycle and maybe. Staying at stakes that are comfortable for you and not investing more than you're willing to lose.
Alex:Yeah. And as always, there will be new people coming in, learning that from this, from, for the first time
Sam:and the cycle
Alex:continues, it is as old as time. Um, before we jump more into. Some of these other interesting topics I'm excited to get to, but I'm just curious personally on this. Is there kind of like a Silicon Valley area of the country for poker players or people like that? Is there like a hub where people meet in person? Because this, this in person aspect is something that I want to talk a little bit more about as we get into some of these other topics, is there a central location? Yeah,
Sam:I think Vegas would have to be it naturally. Um, there's certainly other hotspots you could, you could, that's. Call Vegas the Mecca. You could throw in Atlantic City. There's a few great properties down in Florida. New York's really good for underground games, uh, just kind of culturally, but a little bit off the record there. L. A. has some good properties. The, the Northwest is actually, is actually becoming quite a hub as well. Boston has, they have an MGM property out there and there's actually some great little gems sprinkled around the Midwest. Uh, I went to a, there's a shout out to run good, but they're, uh, they're, they were an, are a partner of ours at poker go and they do some great, like they have a mid, uh, a mid to low stakes circuit that they do all around the country. I went to a great event of theirs in Kansas city, which was just like spectacular. I didn't, it's a funny anecdote, but I like, I, I did not think I was, nor am I anyone of importance in that world. But, uh, I think just because. Like the, the, the power that poker go had as a brand in that space and how notable it was to this subset of like niche audience, I, uh, when I went to that tournament, it was the first time that people had ever asked, like, take selfies with me as like the representative of president of poker go at the time. And it was a really special thing. And it, and it harkens back to a lot of like the professionally, the web three step two of like, why I love thinking about like passions and IP and whatever else is like poker as a fandom is not. Massive, but like those that love poker, like you said earlier, really fucking love poker. So it was fun. It was fun for me in that professionally to be engaged in that. So it's so back to the question, it's probably Vegas, but I think everywhere, everywhere there's casino properties, you'll find people that are like, amazingly passionate
Alex:about it. So I'm interested for your perspective here. I mentioned the in person versus remote, and you've split both worlds here where. I, you're based in Vegas, right? Yep. You're based in Vegas. You've, you've had experience in person at these different tournaments events, even just going to different casinos, uh, and gambling personally. But then you've also had poker go, which is a streaming platform for these different events. And I'm curious how you see the balance between. Um, in person versus remote and its ability to create fandom and communities, which the fandom versus communities piece is another one I want to dig into. So how do you see the juxtaposition between those two things? Is there really big differences between in person and remote? Is the technology getting better where remote can basically replace in person or are there certain things that can't be replaced? What are your thoughts around that?
Sam:Sure. So it's a really good question and I'll try there's so many fastest to it, but I'll try to like be as concise as I can. So poker is interesting as an example because there's the two sort of key categories if you were to consider, well, put aside like cash game versus tournaments, but you can say live versus online or like to the two of the primary verticals. And there are. There are players that play both, there are players that are, that solely play live tournaments, there's players that only play online, and there's a reason for that, it's because certain players, certain types of players excel across different forums, some people would call themselves more field players, where they excel at being in live formats and being able to see people and read people and have that leveling battle, like looking at, looking someone in the eyes. And number of instances, uh, whereas some, some people prefer to play online because it's much more robotic, like, you know, your, your decisions, you don't, you don't have the ability to understand the person behind a username, except what you can glean out from maybe their avatar or the name itself, perhaps even how long they take to make an action can give you information. But other than that, there's really not much there other than the math of your hand, the board that sizing and the action thus far. So. I think that is an interesting proposition in and of itself. And the sort of my answer to that is the answer to the part two of the question, which is like fan experiences, which is there's people that are going to gravitate towards the in person being live poker, there's people that are gravitate towards the online version, which is. Online poker. And I think that applies to fandom as well, where I don't see them as substitutes for one another, but rather complimentary. And there will be different types of fans who are able to engage with certain types of experiences that allow them to more closely connect with that fandom. I think there's something to be said, if you think about, like, traditional fandom in the way of, like, sports, uh, I think, which is inherently anchored to geographies. So thinking about how we provide global connectivity to, uh, fandom communities that people Love and if I'm if I'm a transplant that can't necessarily I'm for unfortunately an Atlanta Falcons fan, but I'm based in Las Vegas So I don't I don't I don't have a way to like I can't go to as many games that I go to So, how do I engage with that fandom when I'm based here? Versus there. And I think there's, there's ways that could be, that, that could be enabled that have not been enabled yet. So it'll be interesting to see over time, you know, how different web three metaverse strategies have an impact on some of the more traditional sports mediums to create that ability. Um, but at the same time, I also, I like to, to, to continue down that road of example on, on my way back from my brother's wedding next week, and I'm actually going to the Falcons game on that Sunday, so I don't see it as like a replacement to that traditional experience. It's just like, there's. Not much better than having a beer in your hand, watching your favorite team hopefully win. Uh, don't get a lot of that, but when it happens, it's really nice. And, uh, like that's like, I don't, I, even as like the web, web three nut job, like I, I would never want to be told, well, you can only watch football games in the metaverse in the future. Like, no, like what I have here is very different from what I have here, but in my mind. This is the core and this being the online element only amplifies what is that in person experience. And that's why I see everything we do in web three is additive to that base fandom and is meant to be. Complimentary, uh, more, more activated than replace it. I,
Alex:I love that answer. And I've heard similar, I've heard one other similar answer. And that I think is the closest to feeling like a satisfying answer, because even the way I asked the question, it's in person versus online. And the real answer is that the complimentary, and if you can have some kind of experience where you have, let's say it's a weekly in person thing. And in between that and the next week's thing, you can have all this online engagement and you have all these different tools that allow people to participate more actively, uh, in between those times versus just kind of being a passive observer. And this gets into another point here where I feel like, especially in web three, the word community, in my opinion, is tossed around. Way more than it should be and I think it's sometimes used as a softer term to fandom instead of saying my fans that just sounds very one directional versus community is it's participatory. Um, I'm curious though. I don't want to lead the witness. If you see a real big difference between the terms fandom. And community and what the main differences might be so
Sam:that's a it's a great question. I don't know if you I'm going to I'm going to probably repeat myself and what I put on linkedin. I don't know if you did like background before this, because I'm going to repeat a lot of what I've written about elsewhere. Because I think this is a very important topic. Um, but I, but I want to, I want to say, first off, I think you brought up a point there in terms of like, Geographies and and sort of live versus online and there's a, there's a story that I love. I did. I was in Europe a few years back and probably 2019 that was in Zurich, Switzerland at some like small recollect shop that my wife and I stopped to before going to the Zurich Zoo and there was a guy and I'm a. The one team I have that does win is the, uh, the Vegas Golden Knights, the hometown hockey team, uh, which we're, we're been, that's been a very fun past several months of that. Um, but I was wearing, I was wearing a hat that day cause it was sunny out. It was summertime in Switzerland and literally the guy who brought us our cheese. was wearing a Golden Knights hat as well. And it was like this, like, like, what the hell type moment I'm seeing 10, 10 plus hours flight away, finding someone who has the same fandom as I do. And it just reminds me of that guy. Cause we were, you know, obviously like sitting there shooting this shit, just like what a small world type of thing for us to come across one another in this foreign land. But like, why should what, there's nothing I would love more than to have his fandom more enabled. And obviously he's not going to be able to make it out to the games, but it's, it's just amazing to see someone who's that loyal and that much of a diehard from literally across the world away. So like giving, giving someone like that connectivity and allowing IP holders, brands, artists, wherever the case may be to reach out to, to connect with fans like that, no matter where they are in the world, I think makes for a better experience all around and allows you to grow your fandom in that sense. And obviously it's not. It's not meant to replace the live experience for those like myself who are able to go to the games, but it's meant to bring us all together where we all agree to love this thing. And he and I out just howling around in Switzerland, we can make that connection. And we know that despite having never met one another, we have something in common, which makes it special. And that is where the community aspect comes into play. And I think, so I, I, I think what's, what's the right way to think about this? I think, I think not all, I think all fandoms are communities, but I don't think that not all communities are fandoms. Let me explain. So I think we've had this real issue in, in the past two years in Web3, where we like to, like you said, yourself, we like to toss around the word community a lot. But when we think about if you, that, that aspect of that experience that I described, it was like we we're both fans of the Golden Knights and that says something about who we're as people, and we have that thing in common and that brings us closer together despite not knowing one another. Now you would, if you assume that to be thesis, there has to be that connectivity, that anchor fandom that brings people together to create community. And I think that's all well and good. I think you can look at all types of fandom. You can talk about, uh, fans of sports. Teams. You can look at Swifties, you can look at, um, even, even fans of certain brands or, or artists, whatever. It doesn't, it doesn't really matter. We've seen this time and time again for years. There's reason why people buy sports jerseys and it's not because they're gonna generate a return on that investment, it's because they wanna attach themselves to. Something bigger than themselves and then allow people who all have that same attachment to connect with one another via their outward representation. But I think in the web three space, we tend to attribute community to what is actually just we all like to make money. And we tend to say, okay, well, because because we all bought this NFT around the same time. We kind of, yeah, we, this, that says something about us that we have in common and we identify with this project and we kind of all have this sort of, no one, no one wants, no one wants, no one wants to say that the emperor's not wearing clothes, but in reality, the emperor's not wearing clothes and the community is only as strong as its floor price. And so that's what I mean to say is like, oftentimes there's not actually fandom there. But rather it's like a house of cards built upon this desire to all make money together, which to be, to be fair, like that, that's a very strong will. And we saw during the bull market, how powerful that could be in running up certain projects in a very short amount of time, because everyone agrees that we all want to make money. We all want to do what we have to do. Pump on Twitter, be reply guys, change our profile pictures. All of these things that we all did to drive up the value of a project. But then once that thesis falls apart, like I, if the Falcons suck at football, I'm still gonna be a fan of the Falcons. Like I'm just, I'm here for better or worse. Like that just, I, I, I've invested my time into this passion. I haven't made money off of it. I've made a lot of heartache, but I, but I'm still happy to be here. The same can't be said for a lot of these Web3 projects where once the, once the core principle for why you got involved in the first place, which is as a money making mechanism, once that falls apart, the whole fandom community thesis falls apart very quickly. And I think that's where that stage right now is like a lot of projects where it's like, Oh, we have such a strong community. You should buy in because of that. Once, once that community doesn't have the shared sort of goal, wish aspiration of going to the moon, buying Lambos, all of the memes that we saw during the bull market. Then community tends to cease to exist very quickly. So that's, that's a long way to answer the question, but I think, I think they're, they're closely correlated, but I think community is a harder. Fandom fandom can be easy. And it's pretty clear once you have it community, not so easy. And then a lot will say that they have it when they, in fact, don't.
Alex:So I could not agree more. And there's so much more in there that I hadn't thought about the, yeah, the, um, circle, circle, I'll, I'll, uh, All squares are rectangles and our rectangles are squares analogy. I love to help think about it. The, um, that's, that was basically the connective tissue for so many communities in web three and bull markets is the floor price. That is a fantastic quote. Uh, yeah. And I mean, it really shows its colors when you say you have a strong community, but you have to say like, what are the actual factors that are holding that community together? And I completely agree that most. Most things that are called communities or a significant portion of things that are called communities are oftentimes fandoms that are just masked as communities and the, um, I think it's the fan versus fan interaction for me is the key piece. For community is just enabling that. And to me, that's a little bit more than just a comment section for people to go back and forth. Like, what are the, what's a richer and richer and richer way for the community to actually participate with each other? And I think there are increasingly more and more tools out there to help allow your fans become a community by interacting with each other. And not just having this one way direction where I talk at you and you comment and you like. And that's not much of a participatory action. And we see this, um, I see this a lot at live peers, the, the, the latest gig that I'm at for the last six months is you see a lot of these platforms being built around video because video is a more engaging way to. Participate, and it's a closer way to interact as in person and YouTube and tick tock and all those other ones. It's basically video one way and comments the other way. And there's not a whole lot that you can do to participate, uh, with your fans and turn them into a community. But now you have all of these different ways for people to say, you know what? I'm going to create a two way street here for me to be able to interact with. My fans and turn them into a community by allowing them to communicate with each other. Um, yeah
Sam:Yeah, I I think I think actually there's a there's a A key theme there and that harkens back to gaming and obviously a lot of groups did this But I think twitch is sort of the first one that went mainstream and creating the ad event of like a twitch chat, which seems like Obvious now, but in hindsight, it was like that was that was like a very new and novel thing to create this gathering place for all the people watching you at home in real time to interact with you and how that impacted the creator economy at large and created this like, and that's what I think that we've seen the power of community and non web three forms when you consider like what, what, um You know, Mr. Beast is doing with feastables or whatever, which one of the Paul brothers launched prime, the energy drink. I can, I try to, I try to steer clear of all that whole culture. Yeah. They're just like the Paul. Um, but, but stuff like that, like you're seeing the power of community and how that stands to drive brand KPIs. And I think web three provides new opportunities to curate that in a more. Optimized in more controllable manner. And I think that's what you, you, you touch on terms of like decentralization there of inherently in the traditional sense of like you're, if you're a new creator, your community in a way is owned by the likes of Twitch or the other centralized platforms that serve as the gathering places for these communities. But how do you create the relationship outside of that? And for that matter, the, you mentioned like the fan to fan engagement, I like to think of it as like a sandbox for interaction, like here I am as a brand or as, as, as an originator of. A fandom and I want to like set up a little environment of experiences where it's like I don't have to be there to manage all my relationships with my fans at all times. I know that they have something in common and I can provide a cool experience for them to experience that thing together in various creative ways and unlocking that potential is I think where web three is really going to go on to shine not in the sense of. You should buy this because it's going to go up in value over time. And I think that's, that's like, that's, that's the problem. And why, why perception is so, uh, a miss right now is that, that is, that was ultimately the, the optimal use case from a mainstream perspective is like, you know, a pulled eight board apes for that stretch are like literally the best investment in the history of. Humanity, like it just, it's, it's obscene, the return on investment that was seen, and that was like, that was what was complying to the mainstream. So that remains to be, that continues to be the primary storyline. It's not about the events, not about the games. It's not about the larger ecosystem. It's about how much money could be made buying these JPEGs. And that's why a lot of people thought it was ridiculous. And that's for good reason. So I think breaking, breaking that, uh, perception and that stigma, is it going to be the paramount challenge in the months and years ahead, which having like optimal. More wholesome use cases, if you will, I think will go a long ways. And I've always said, I said this from day one in the bull market, like buy things that you would enjoy owning if they were worth zero. And I myself didn't fully listen to that, but I think it remains all the more true in that you should be buying things that. You enjoy as experiences and as, as tokens of fandom where, and frankly, if you, if you were to then flip the script and say, like, from a financial point of view, what does that mean? Like, I don't, I don't want to buy, buy something and then have it be worth nothing, but in reality, if you feel that way, chances are other people will feel that way. And that's what, but then we, we wanting to buy these same things. And at the end of the day, you end up with being surrounded by everyone that loves the same thing, which creates for a win win scenario across all fronts.
Alex:Yeah, um, that I, I saw a poll at one point where it was asking people was the main reason why you buy certain NFTs. It might have been specifically podcast NFTs. And by far the most common response was to support a friend. So a lot of times these NFTs, if it's not a purely speculative thing, it's just a signal to say. It's basically collector's item. You're just buying all these different digital collectibles to say, this is who I am. And I saw you, I see some figures back there and I just had, um, uh, like crypto sapiens, a guy on the podcast, um, Humpty really, really good guy. Big collector and same thing talking about that there's a physical collecting thing. There's a certain psychology behind collecting. It's a, it's an to help other people show our identity. And now we have this digital way. And I mean, if you have a shelf in your home. Really, if it's in the backdrop of your zoom or you basically invite people over, that's the only way you can share that. But you have this digital collectible on a, on a public ledger. Now you can suddenly show who you are through this series of things that you're collecting. And hopefully there's a lot more to it than it's a speculative asset. It's more to signal and say, this is who I support. This is my values are my principles. Um, yeah, I, I want to come back to this other point that you mentioned about Twitch really starting out the kind of. The, the, the chat really for a live stream. I think I agree. It was a really, really big. Uh, differentiator, but I think where Twitch maybe got the idea was from games and especially like the early MMOs were really where you saw these incredibly strong online first online native communities of people that were really honestly communities. And I do think that there are 2 reasons for that 1, you have the ability for people to participate. And there are fans of this game who now get to interact with each other. Okay, now that fandom turns into a community. WoW is a really big example. Earlier than that, EverQuest 2, EverQuest 1, Lineage, stuff like that. That's what games essentially were, is it was this kind of digital world. It was just a digital chat room, essentially. And it just allows other people to interact with each other around this thing that they're fans of. I think the other piece here that we haven't gotten into yet is around gamification. And it makes something super addictive, super fun. And you have things like poker. You have things like MMOs, other games. A lot of things in Web3 are taking inspiration from this, from gamification. So combined with something like community, How do you see gamification from two of your loves, poker and gaming, playing a role, um, not only in those communities and your love for those things, but how you've kind of taken some of those things into the professional world? Yeah, it's, it's
Sam:super interesting and you're so right. And I, I, um, I don't know, I've never really shared this publicly with anyone ever, but, um, It reminds me, like, there was one, it was a, it was somewhat of a function of spending so much time in World of Warcraft and somewhat a function of just being a loser in high school, but I actually, I actually, like, one of, I think it was maybe my sophomore, freshman or sophomore year of high school, I actually spent my New Year's, like, at midnight in Stormwind World of Warcraft with my guild. So, like, it's a case in point of, like, And then guild is an operative word there because like that was like the original community of we all, we all unite around a shared purpose. We all agree to set aside time to work to achieve something together. Oftentimes that was either raiding or doing arenas or pvp and large battlegrounds. Like we, we value one another. We value each other's time and we want to spend this time together to accomplish these things in this game. And that makes us a community community. Inherently. And so to your point, that was a very interesting phenomenon. And, and as someone, you know, in my, in my formative years, getting in more into gaming, like I started with RuneScape and then ended up in World of Warcraft eventually. And, uh, that was, that had a large impact on me. And, um, I told you this story separately, but in fact, some of my best friends and my primary business partner today, we grew, we went to high school together, but we met in World of Warcraft. And so some of my closest relationships that have stood the test of time over the past 15 1520 years now. Wow. Yeah, 15. I'll say 15 years. That's I'm not ready to go to 20 yet. 15 years like they were formed in through communities like that, which I think is a really, really cool dynamic. Um, and yeah, I think it's it's that whole sort of Upbringing has, has impacted a lot of why, why I've done what I've done in my business and businesses, but also what drives me to continue to do that in the future and how I think about the world in general. Um, I think if you look at world of Warcraft in particular, I'm going to continue to cite that as an example, because I've spent the most by far hours there, but we, it really is. It's a long form, long form narrative of doing chores for people that don't exist around objectives that don't matter. And by that, I mean, you start off and you, your first, your first goal is to level to 60 in its original form. And you, you venture off from the starting point, you, along the way, you do quests. To, you know, kill random things, to collect other things, to find certain trinkets, you get armor along the way. But really, like, in a very mechanical sense, you know, you go to the Barrens and you have to go get ten Planestrider Beaks. And it's like, okay, now Run around and go do that. But then if, if your mom says, go to the grocery store and, and buy me, buy me 10 potatoes for dinner tonight, it's like, nah, fuck that. I'm not doing it. Yeah.
Alex:It's like, no, that's, that's
Sam:absurd. No way, mom. But it's like, it's the, like mechanically the exact same thing. It's, it's, it's, it's a, is it's someone of authority, whether that be perceived or otherwise. Telling you that you need to go out and do certain things in order to move forward in the game or in life as it so were with, uh, with getting an allowance or whatever the case may be. So, I think there's something interesting around like how gamification impacts motivation at large and why we, why we perceive tasks in game to be, uh, fruitful and almost fun, whereas tasks in the real world can often be burdensome or just downright annoying to do. And so, how do we introduce those type of tactics to The way that we work, the way that we live, the way that we experience products. And from a professional standpoint, that's where I've spent a lot of my time thinking, and I just personally enjoy like looking at various tactics. And I, as a gamer at heart, whenever I engage with a new product where it's like, wow, this is fun, like I find this fascinating and just like, I want to strip the layers off and think about what they're doing to make me. Feel good about what it is that I'm doing, as opposed to a lot of the other apps that I might engage with that feel like it's a burden or a waste of time. So thinking about like the, you know, the, the, the feedback loops, the dopamine triggers, the awards, the rewards mechanisms, the, the player versus player elements in some cases, the leaderboards, the point scoring system, everything like that, how that could potentially impact non obvious industries. I think it was really fascinating
Alex:for me. I've done a lot of thinking on this too. It sounds like you have as well, which is like, why is this? Seemingly fake task that really means nothing. And I'll sometimes have these moments where I'm like, why am I doing this? Like, why is this so addicting? Why does it feel so good? And for me, it's the, it's the ability to see tangible progress. And in real life, it's very difficult to see progress. I could even say something like, ah, man, I've been working on this for the longest time, whatever. And I'll talk to him. I'll complain to my wife about it. She's like. Are you kidding me? You've like, you are like night and day difference from a year ago and I'll think back and it's still, it's like really hard for me to see where I am now and where I was, but when you're in a game, it's like, Oh, I was level one and now I'm level 60 and it took me this much time. Like it's super, super tangible and you have all these, you know, there's. Little bits of psychology there where it's flashing lights. You level up. It's this big deal. You get new things and it's like this sudden like beam of light strikes down. Like you have leveled up. You've improved and that feels really good. Then this gradual kind of subterfugic progress that is real life. And I think the people who can hone that and say. How can you more tangibly show people that you've actually made progress towards this particular goal that we have set up for you? I mean, Duolingo is a great example that have used gamification to the benefit of something that a lot of people actually want to do, which is language learning. And I was just talking to my mom, who I think is on day 1600 streak of on that thing. And you can sit there and yeah, it's like, congrats mom, congrats mom. And you can sit there and zoom out and say like this streak literally means nothing, but I want to keep it. And that's just enough to keep someone motivated to keep that habit. And language learning is a habit at the end of the day. You got to do it every day, whether it's five minutes or whether it's 30 minutes. I just find it fascinating. And there's a quote out there and I wish I could get credit to the right person. I'll find it afterwards. But it's something to the kin of game developers know more about human nature and psychology than actual psychologists and the product. It speaks for itself.
Sam:Yeah. No, I believe it. I mean, for me, I dabble with Duolingo and I had a couple of the, uh, the streak freezes that broke. And then I just, I, I knew where my mind was going as like, I, as much as I want to learn a language, I just can't have more on my plate and other obligation in my day of something I have to do. For me, the big one, the past couple of years was Wordle because that was like a big thing where you had your Wordle streak on a daily basis. And I think, I think mine got up to like. Like a hundred something and I was at like 99 percent complete because I missed one maybe early on and um, and then it was actually not that long ago, but I, I, my streak was broken one morning and it was like liberating. Like I felt like I had just like, I'd broken off, broken up chains. Like Dobby's a free elf now. Like I can, I can, I can, I can finally not do Wordle and not. burning urge inside of me that I have to do in order to maintain my streak. So, and that's where like, and so my favorite book on this, and it's, it's by a guy named Yu Kai Chao, who's actually an advisor for mid pass, which is kind of a full circle moment for me. Cause it's like my favorite book in gamification and then went and pitched in mid pass, he was like, Oh sure. That sounds cool. So now he's going to be helping us build out our gamification mechanics, but, um, actionable gamification is the name of his book. And he writes a lot about, he has this autolysis framework and basically In his philosophy, the eight things that drive us to do what we do, and those are all built around game mechanics. And so the one that comes to mind most prominently for me is like a higher purpose, like creating narratives around why you should do something. And that's something that World of Warcraft has done. That's, that's the entire purpose of having quest lines, like going out and collecting these things arbitrarily doesn't matter. But if you know that it's to create this potion, which will allow you to transmogrify. So you could infiltrate this, this base, this, this cave and strangle in strangle, thorn and veil, I'm dating myself. Now you can tell I've played a little bit, but if it, if it has like this higher narrative around it, there's, there's reasoning for all of a sudden it feels very important, whereas. Mundanely going to pick up potatoes at the grocery store doesn't necessarily have that higher purpose. So that's only one of eight. And there's all these other mechanics that come into play. And then to that end regarding the street, I think we also introduce the layer of White hat versus black hat is what he called it. So there are there are inherently like nefarious tactics that take place in gaming that make whereas some aspects will make you feel good. Like the narrative driven one will make you feel positive. I feel like I'm accomplishing something. There's certain things that ways integrates around getting people to log, you know, various things in the road police for the purposes not of. Not anything else other than helping other people and that is that is a white hat motivation of, you know, enabling more safety for drivers, whereas perhaps the streak one would fall more in the black hat where it's like the psychology of not wanting of loss avoidance back to it, of not wanting to break your streak and to lose that streak. So you just coming back over and over again, regardless of whether you feel like you need to or frankly, in some cases, even want to, but just because you don't want to lose something that you had for a long time. So there's like, there's this, there's so many different roads that that goes down across the gamification is larger topic. And that's the crazy part is like, especially to read his book, there's things that. It's like gamification is obvious and things that are meant to be games, but looking at gamification mechanics and things that aren't games just in life is super interesting. And then unlocking the ways to do that and in such a way that makes for a more enriching experience at large, potentially with doing things you don't want to do, I think is really interesting.
Alex:This might be a tough question off the top of your head, but are there examples you can think of right now of gamification that did not work? Like someone who was trying to inject gamification into something that felt so lazy and so Uh, meaningless that it was like, I could even think of just general factors here, which is I download a new app and it's something random and they're like. You finished the tutorial and I'm getting like notification after notification, after notification. I'm like, I've literally done nothing. And you're just trying to like dopamine hit me, like smack me across the face with dopamine and it's just not working. So I'm wondering if there are specific examples or other criteria like that that you've seen, there's just like, does not work for someone who's clearly trying to gamify something. Yeah. So,
Sam:I mean, I, I have my personal opinions just like from my industry background and there's times I see brands do stuff like this. I'm like, I know what you're doing. Like, it's just, it feels, it feels a little bit. Contrived in a sense. I think that sometimes like looking at. There's a there's a certain network. I don't know if they do it anymore, but they'll do like a predictive wagering promotion where it's like, guess, guess the outcome of these things and win this. And it's like, it's clearly just meant to be a way to like, put up some arbitrary price pool and then drive a bunch of data acquisition. So you can collect a bunch of emails under the guise of if you're smart and know football, you can win 10, 000, which inherently to an extent is true. But like, you know, you know why that isn't it's not that fun. Like, I'm just I'm just Picking, picking random outcomes without any control over what exactly happens. And then, yeah, I get to watch the game and hope for my thing to happen. Uh, but there really isn't a ton of skill involved with that, but I guess I'm just describing sports betting. So it shows what I know, but, but all that being said, I, um, I think you touched on an important one too. And I think that's in, in you guys book, he talks about that quite a bit around the. The aspect of you want something to be attainable, but challenging where you don't, you don't want it to come too easy because then it's not taken seriously and not appreciated. Uh, you want to, you want to achieve a sense of fulfillment along the way with striving for something and, and being able to reach something because the second that it's perceived to be too easy and thus a waste of time or speaking of player versus player, something that everyone else can get, then it's therefore not special and immediately once makes you want to disengage with
Alex:it. Yeah, I'm thinking of like the last time I played rocket league, rocket league is my latest just obsession where it's almost easy to learn, but impossible to master very PVP based. And it's one of those things where you just have a bad day. You're like, screw this game. I'm done. I hate it. I'm never playing. And the next day you just pick it right back up. It is that right amount of like, it's very challenging, but attainable. And when you do things well, it feels really, really good. And the mechanics are designed really well where they're very, the rules are very simple, the controls are very simple, but you can, you can take them to the nth degree and it's one of those things where the developers will design the physics and players will figure out ways to make those cars fly through the air and score goals in ways that they would have never predicted. And that to me is the sign of like a really well thought out and designed. Rule based and in this case, like physics based thing, how you apply that to other things. I mean, it's, it's incredibly difficult. Um, I, I don't know, like, this is what's great about books like that is like, you can some, you can kind of like reverse engineer. Uh, notes from, from games that have worked and good examples that have worked and just trying to see how can I inject those things, um, truly into something that doesn't feel contrived and doesn't feel like you're just creating problems out of thin air, but really feels like I want to do this. Difficult to do in practice, I think.
Sam:Yeah, and, and I think discovery is a big part about that, of like, not exactly knowing the right way to do things, and for that matter, having different ways to do things well, and allowing players to find that out along the way. And it's sort of like the surprise and delight mentality of, you know, encountering things you didn't expect, and that's actually another one of, you guys, eight things is like unpredictability factor. And that's the thing, is like, if you have like a, a truly and fully. Linear storyline, it gets very boring very quickly, because everyone is doing the same things to make the same progress to end up at the same place. But I mean, WoW is another good example of this, where you have, you have different avenues to achieve the eventual destination, let's call it level 60, where you can quest in different places. You could do PvP versus PvE, you could do dungeons, uh, all these different things. That you, you have different professions you could do to level up, like there's so many different variables at play, which allows for a, a custom and unpredictable experience, which is hard to create, but once you have it, it's, it's super engaging. And you, you mentioned Rocket League. I don't, I don't have time to grind like I used to, but, um, the one I, the one I do dabble with dabble in when I have the opportunity is, uh, is Warzone, which. Is like, it's, it's, it's, I mean, it's purely PVP in the worst way in the most toxic way, but nonetheless, it's, I find it fun because. You know, every game is different and it's so strategically oriented and there's, and by the nature of, uh, I'm, I'm not good enough to win very often, but by the nature of like a, about a Royale, it's, it's worth the price of admission to win that 5 percent of the time and that high you feel upon doing so is like, so worth the pain of the 95%. And that's like, that's why we came coming back from more punishment is like that game factor of trying to unlock the alpha, if you will. That, that makes you more successful, whether that's the loadout, whether that's the strategy, whether that's the people you're playing with, the maps, whatever the case may be.
Alex:Man, that's a great parallel. Like, because with Battle Royale games, that's basically the win percentage is like 5%. And yet it's so addicting for people when you win so that you rarely win. And I mean, I think of this something close to Like sales, like that's a similar conversion. I mean, 5 percent would be great with the volume that some people do. And yeah, it's the most terrifying thing that people can possibly imagine for the vast majority of people. And yet this other game has hundreds of thousands or millions of people in something like fortnight or apex or one of the other flavors of that. And it's fun. So like, why is something like still so terrifying, but something like. Apex and Fortnite, so addicting. There's so much to unpack there. And how can you inject some of those things into some other activity that is terrifying or just. Yeah.
Sam:Again, it's like, and back to it, it's, it's using gamification tactics to make better the things that you might not want to do. And certainly like cold calling or cold emailing for sales would very much fall into that category of like, I hate this. And as I could say, as a startup founder, like I am in that category, I hate this, but it's just something you inherently have to do as a part of growing your business or working in that profession. If you're. Working with larger business. And so that's, I'm always like, I, I try to practice what I preach. Like I have, um, like, uh, right next to me, I have like a daily habit tracker of like, both for personal, professional reasons, reasons. Like I start my day every morning, like, okay, like how I would do yesterday. And like I track, you know, took vitamins, went to the gym, reached, pitched mint pass, reached out to partners. Like I'm actively trying, it's hard because I'm not saying it's like the easiest thing in the world to do, but it's like small things like that that like turn, you Turn your lifestyle and turn the things you need to do to advance your lifestyle into more bite size, objective based outcomes like you would think of in game quest for World of Warcraft and then anchoring your mindset to those in such a way that. Doesn't necessarily to your earlier point around like progress isn't anchored to like, like I, this is going to be a hot take, but like, I don't have goals like I, that's, I know, like, that's like a weird thing to, that's a weird thing to say, but like, I trust that if I get this part of my life, right, every day, I'll do enough to advance me to where I need to be that in theory, the goals that I'd have as outcomes will have been achieved through the processes in which Service inputs. So that's I kind of like, and that's in such a way I've reversed script like, yes, my goal is to get to level 60 to put it in like a gaming term, but I know that it's the questing that's actually going to matter to get me there as opposed to thinking about what raids I'm going to do when I get to 16 other things that come when you think about long term in the future. So it's how I live my life. And I think it's fascinating to think about how it impacts other things.
Alex:I, I like that it's a hot take, but I like that take, and I don't know, there's probably psychology around it to say goal versus no goal oriented. But I think at the end of the day, if you are motivated enough by the outcome that you're trying to get, and it might not be a traditional smart goal where it's like, it's time based, like, it's very quantifiable, blah, blah, blah, blah. But you might just say, I want to be able to do this thing. And in order to do this thing, I got to do this thing first. And that could be just enough motivation to actually get you through. And just do the process every single day of slowly making progress towards the thing that will allow you to do this other thing that you're trying to get to. So it just depends how you're motivated. And for me, that seeing that tangible progress every day. And that micro, just the, that little bit of progress, like I played this long and I got this much out of it, that to me is the most satisfying thing where it's like, you eventually get to that goal. And in games, I don't know if it's like you, where it's like, oh, I got full T2. And by the time you get full T2, you're like, oh, there's no point in playing anymore because I've progressed. Like, there's no, there's no end goal that I was trying to say, like, I need to get all T2. So. I can do this thing. It's like, no, I'm just gearing so I can get better and better and better. And the process of getting better for me personally is what's the most fun. So I, I would kind of agree with you in that it has to be something that the prop, the prop, um, The process itself is really enjoyable and working towards some ultimate goal, but it's like, almost like if you reach that ultimate goal and you don't have something beyond, then you just quit and you're done. There's no point because there's no progression.
Sam:It's so what you just said reminds me of, and I'm going to continue to just like, wow. But remember how the experience bar was done in like little rectangles, like it was, it was 20 of them where that was, that was done for a specific reason, because when I logged in and I see that I'm one and a half bars in. I would say easier to today. I, I'm getting, I'm getting 10 bars in and I, and I literally like, and that would take a lot of time and like the pre, the pre burning crusade era when you had like 58, like Yeah. You're forever, oh, you're, you're in those level, like forties and fifties and it becomes a grind. And so it'd be like an all day event. Like, I'm just not getting up from this chair until I get, I get to halfway to level 59 and, and I do it. In hindsight, it felt like I was trying to get somewhere, but in reality, like that was the fun that was being had all along. And to put it in terms of then trying to make this work for like a lifestyle purposes, like I've for the past year or so been on this big fitness kick and I'm down like 30 pounds and. Nice. It's not, it's not because when I set out, I was like, well, actually I, I did, I did book a bet. So I take that back. I did have a number that I had to hit to not lose a bunch of money. But as I've, as I then won that bet and I've been ushered in this new era of lifestyle, I don't sit here thinking like, I need to get to this weight by this and this time. And I'm going to do this by doing this. I know that like three things in my, um, in my sort of habit journal include exercise, uh, take vitamins. And diet meaning like 2200 calories or less with 175 plus grams of protein. And the more days I string together that include all of those three things, inherently, the more progress I'm going to see towards those eventual health based outcomes, whether it be a function of general health, weight, wellness, well being, whatever we think of it as. Like, I know that it's, I think it's more important to choose where you point the arrow. As opposed to where the arrow ends up because that's like this, this to me is pointing the arrow and saying, like, I know by, by these small little changes today, I get somewhere much different
Alex:tomorrow. I completely agree on that point. It's like, to me, trajectory means everything versus destination and where you're at. Because if I'm at like six foot, one 70 pounds, just ripped, I've gained five pounds of fat over the weekend. To me, that's worse than if I'm at one 50 skinny as hell, but I'm gaining like one pound every two weeks. To me, it's the trajectory that matters. I'm completely the same, especially on fitness where it's like, I haven't had goals since college when I was an athlete. I just literally say I am the type of person who goes and works out. Two to four times per week. And I just do that. And the process is what's enjoyable to me. And yet when I face something else where it's like, I want this goal and I can't sit down and do the things that get me to that goal. And it's like maddening. I'm like, because I'm doing the thing that everyone's telling me to do, which is set a goal. And yet the process freaking sucks and I don't want to do it. So like, how can you make the process more of the thing that. Is what you want to do, even if it's something that like, even in, in MMOs, I mean, there's been times in the MMO where I'm like, I'm not having a good time right now, but I really want to do this. I'm super freaking motivated. And it's like, it's just this weird psychology game where I'm observing myself doing something that I don't like. I'm like, why am I volunteering for this chore right now and grinding this out? At the end of the day, it's fun. You want to do it. So like, how can you inject that into other activities? And I imagine other founders who are building apps that hopefully morally want to be addictive.
Sam:Yeah, no. And I think, I think that's what to do to circle back to what we're, at least as opposed to be adjacently talking about today, I think there's a lot of what you just said reminds me of themes from web three in, in two ways, um, identity and incentives. Like I think, I think web three stands to be very powerful in both in. Back to like the community aspect, allowing people to engage with. Aspects of themselves that make up who they are in more immersive ways with other people that identify similarly. So, in a, in a, in a, not to not to belittle the concept, but like, creating fan clubs around shared identity. That is in theory, what community is. So how can like, for exercise groups, like, what, what web 3 strategies can we integrate to. Make working out more fun amongst like minded people who all either enjoy working out or want to enjoy working out more and it's in a way it's like it's I we can say what we want about him But like crossfit has done a really good job with this in a physical sense Like we we hear about crossfit all the fucking time for people that do crossfit because people who do crossfit Really fucking love to do CrossFit. Yeah. And why is that? And they let you know. It's because they let you know, but it's because they've created community outta a gym membership. And there's no other, like I, I work out at Anytime Fitness and no knocking out on any Anytime Fitness, but like, I don't identify myself as an Anytime Fitness outer or, or exerciser, It is a venue for my workout and that's about it. Whereas people who do CrossFit, like that is who they are. They are CrossFit people. And so paralleling that into digital mediums, I think is very interesting. And then integrating the aspect of incentivization around that. And I don't think that everything needs to be a blank to earn economy, to have validity in a web three world. Like I think in fact, that's almost doing more harm than good. And like introducing incentive structures where no incentives are needed. Like there's a couple, I don't want to throw anyone under the bus, but we all love to use certain things. And we don't need to get paid to do them. So why make that to earn arbitrarily? And I think, I mean, to be fair, I think, I think play to earn in gaming sometimes has this stigma attached to it where I, I'd rather have a really fun game than play a shitty game that can make money. And I think that's where, that's where play during gaming has gone wrong. Where you think like, well, why wouldn't you go play this? If you can make a few bucks every day by going into your dailies. But it's like, I don't play games to make money. I play for a great experience that puts me in a state of flow and allows me to connect with friends. If there's ways for me to get NFTs out of that. And I think like you would get this in rocket league and I get it in war zone, but like skins as NFTs would be very cool. I'd love to have an exclusive skin that only a hundred people in this world have. And that's verified on chain, uh, with. verified scarcity cooked into it, that doesn't exist today. Like I can, I can run around with 100, 000 other people looking like Snoop Dogg and I can't say otherwise about it. But having like pairing those two things together where you have this great game with, with NFT web three mechanics that make the core experience better without financializing the outcomes of the game itself beyond just having a fun time. I think that is where like we need to get to in this world. And Factors, and I think a lot of what we discussed in the way of like gamification, identity, incentives, all that hodgepodge of things.
Alex:Yeah, not everything needs to be gamified, needs to be incentivized. Like, it can almost bastardize certain things that you love it for the thing itself versus what you can get out of it. And I'm, I'm with you on the, I mean, this is a whole other. Topic we don't have to get into, but the whole play to win gaming aspect, I've heard a lot of strong opinions from people who are not just only saying like all NFTs are bad. It's like, okay, great. That's one opinion. But then others who are saying, look, I'm gaming to kind of get away from the real world. As soon as you inject real world economy into this game, now it suddenly doesn't become. Fun. I want it to be a fun, relaxing experience. I don't want it to be, I don't want every game to be a min max experience. I sometimes just want to relax and enjoy the process. So I'm with you there. And who knows, I don't think the play to earn is going to. Convince many people who are already gamers, but might be more of a thing that you see the next generation of gamers taking advantage of. And we'll see, like it can very much get into a bad place where you have things like the Fortnite type of, um, RNG. Kids are just using their parents credit cards and they're just trying to get loot boxes. And like, that's almost gambling early on. Right. It's like, there's a, there's a, there's a right place for all of that. But, um, man, this has been such a fun conversation. I knew this would be a good one and I was looking forward to it and it did not disappoint. You mentioned a book, Yukai Cho, which I really want to read now. I know you recommended it before and it's in my cart. I just need to buy it. Are there any other. Books, podcasts, videos, blogs, whatever else around. And I mean, this is a big ask, but anything around poker, gamification, fandom, community, any of these other things that we really talked about, where you're just like, yes, this was hugely influential for me. And it's just like. First thing pops in your head.
Sam:Yeah. Um, I have books on my bookshelf. Let me, let me circle back. So in terms of, in terms, uh, in terms of poker, the, my favorite book, poker book I've read is, um, every hand revealed by Gus Hansen, which is like, it basically, he won the Aussie millions back. It's probably now 10, 15 years ago, but by happenstance, he was preparing for this book and he literally took notes on every single hand he played in his thought process throughout. So it's a nice, basically wire to wire analysis of every aspect of tournament poker from early stage play to, uh, middle of middle of the tournament when you were accumulating chips and then towards the money bubble to then ICM implications getting to the final table and then ultimately winning as play dwindles with 5, 4, 3, 2. And then last player standing. So that one's a really cool one on the poker side of things. Um, in terms of like business y stuff, uh, Zero to One by Peter Thiel just has like been, been very formative in my own like startup life, kind of an obvious cliche one, but nonetheless, I think a good one. Some of, some of like, I do a lot of like, uh, you know, especially when I don't want to be handling work things like personal development type books, I do a lot of like random stoic reading, kind of one of those guys. So I have like, I have, uh, like Ryan holiday, the stuff he puts out is really good. I read, I have the daily stoic next to me next to my little journal that I do every morning. I'm like a wellness bro now. And then, um, let me think when then actually a book I just finished by the advice of my co founder is, um, Uh, the messy middle, which is basically about the startup journey learnings from the founder of Behance. And then I think to, to close it on like, what is my favorite book of all time and has guided a lot of my systems, which they're called that in this book is another cliche one, but atomic habits, I think has been just, it's, it's the most bang for your buck in my mind for personal development book to cover so many aspects of life and understanding the. The compounding nature of your daily activities. And I think my favorite quote from that to like give a preview of that framework that may not have read it is something that I live by, which is like every. Everything, every, every action you take each day is a vote for the person that you want to be, and in aggregate, one vote is not going to win an election for either party, but if you continue to slope, if you continue to put votes in the wrong box, so to speak, then all of a sudden you become a person that you didn't expect to be along the way, so I think it's important as a perspective to keep in mind on a daily basis, but then also on the flip side, like not beat yourself up if you have an off day or something like that. You know, if you're not able to make it to the gym on a given day, it's Halloween tonight. We might have some candy. I'm not going to let that spiral my, uh, my, my health diet process. Just because today I'm like, your identity is not going to
Alex:change. Exactly. Yeah. I'd say that's my favorite. That's my favorite quote from that one too. That was a big paradigm shift for me to say, I want to be this way. I want to be this way. And it's like, well, you kind of need to prove to yourself that you are that person through the actions that you take. And. It's a habit. It's a habit. You do it each day to get there. Um, have you read, um, Thinking in Bets? I want to know your opinion on that.
Sam:No, that sounds
Alex:like a good one though. So, that is, um, that is by Annie Duke, who is also a professional poker player. And I've heard that recommended a few times from different domains of people. So I'll, I'll send you that as well. I'll put it in the show notes and also on James clear atomic habits, uh, a good starter and probably for some of these people too, you could probably find a lot of them on podcasts. I know James clear has been on Tim Ferriss's podcast. And that to me was a nice introductory. Like introduction to his concepts and you get a nice little kind of cliff notes of the whole book. And then if you want, you can buy the book after that. So I'd also recommend that I'll put a link to that here as well. Good job. Um, man, this was super, super fun. Sam, uh, did not disappoint covered a lot of ground for we wrap up here. Uh, let people know what you're working on now. I know we talked a little bit about poker go and what you're working on there, but what are your latest projects? Where can people find you? Where are you at online?
Sam:Yeah, so, um, I'll quickly plug our project mint pass. And I think we're trying to take a lot of the key themes we talked about here today around identity gamification and digital experiences and bring that into a world of travel. You touched earlier on like psychology or on collectorship. And I think we've seen that a lot in collecting souvenirs for not necessarily I don't. Collect the snow globe because I wanted to go up in value over time. I want to showcase somewhere I've been in this experience that I've had. So anchoring, anchoring that to digital mediums and creating cool experiences around that is what we're doing with mid pass. Basically, you'll be able to collect digital souvenirs by authenticating travel and then introducing like incentive based rewards when your travels inspire others to have their own travel experiences. Um, and, and yeah, so we're, we're launching that in a couple of months and that's the, uh, the. It's the site's available now at www. midpass. com. So anyone interested could go sign up there for a wait list. I will not spam you, but you'll get early access to the platform. It sounds like a good deal to me. And then as for me, best place to find me as a LinkedIn, uh, Sam Simmons, I'll probably come up there. Uh, redhead guy with, uh, with a vest on. So look out for that.
Alex:Love it, man. I've been looking for something like MidPass for a while. I feel like having a map with pins in it does not abide for my. Moving every year. So I'm looking forward to, to using that. So thanks again, Sam, for joining. It was so much fun. Uh, and thanks everyone for listening. Please like subscribe, whatever platform that you're listening to this on. And, um, Sam, thank you again for joining. It was a fun one.
Sam:Thanks for having me. Super fun.