Brendan Greene: Building a Virtual Planet

Brendan Greene, better known as PlayerUnknown is a video game developer best known for creating PUBG: Battlegrounds. In 2019 he left active development on the game to form PUBG Special Projects and PlayerUnknown Productions, where he is developing an ambitious virtual world far larger than the one in PUBG.

Transcript

DJ: [00:00:00] From Silicon Valley, the heart of startup land, it's Getting2Alpha. The show about creating innovative, compelling experiences that people love. And now, here's your host, game designer, entrepreneur, and startup coach, Amy Jo Kim. 

Amy: Brendan Greene, aka PlayerUnknown, is the creative force behind PUBG, the original Battle Royale game, and the fifth most profitable video game of all time.

What makes PUBG so great, and endlessly replayable, is that the game is different every time you play. Recently, I had the pleasure of spending some time with Brendan, and I gotta tell you, our conversation blew me away.

Brendan: For me, it was just creating this space that was unique every time. You never knew what weapons you'd be able to get because you don't know what weapons are on the map.

It's almost like poker, right? Where you all start at the same deck. And depending on what cards you get, you can win. And in poker, like in [00:01:00] battle royale, you don't necessarily have to have the best cards to win. 

Amy: Listen in and find out how PUBG came to life and why Brendan is now focused on building an open ended virtual world.

That's the size of planet Earth.

Welcome Brendan Greene to our Game Thinking Academy. Really thrilled that you're here. 

Brendan: Well, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure. 

Amy: So I met Brendan a few weeks ago in the hills of Barcelona. We spent some time together and that just made me want to know so much more about Brendan's background and really how he navigated through the games industry.

So Brendan, let's get started. Tell us how you came to be in the games industry, messing around with mods and creating PUBG, what's your background, what were your first touchstones in tech and gaming? 

Brendan: So [00:02:00] I wasn't what you'd consider like a gamer compared to most of the people that I meet at conventions.

I was kind of into gaming in my early twenties. I played games like Delta Force Black Hawk Down. I played a lot of American's Army. I liked the realistic game. And then I went to Brazil about 15 years ago or so, and I was saving to come home after. Spending about four years there. And I suddenly got back into game.

I had been a photographer, did some DJing, was a graphic designer, and that was kind of my life. And I, yeah, I played games occasionally with them. Saving to come home, I didn't have much to do. So I started looking into games I could play and I discovered almost by accident, the DayZ mod on Arma 2. And that sort of opened my mind to open world games.

And I really, that lit a fire inside me. I was You know, every other game had this kind of linear path you had to take. And this was the story. And these were the puzzles you had to solve with, with DayZ mod. It was, this is a world, here are some systems and [00:03:00] rules, go make, make your own fun, and that really drew me in.

And, and through DayZ, then I got opened up to the Arma modding community in general, Wasteland, King of the Hill, all these other great communities and. I really just wanted to be part of that. So I had seen an event on the Daisy mod called the Survivor Games and it was by Brian Hickson and Jordan Tare.

Brian went on to become the creative director of Daisy, but it was kind of like a version of the Hunger Games. They had 16 teams of two, I think, or eight teams of two, I can't remember what. It was very much set up like the Hunger Games. There was a cornucopia and everyone started in the start position, but it was run by admins and admins kind of decided where the next zones would be.

Yeah. It was controlled by humans and it was only for streamers. So me as a player, I wanted to play something like this and I couldn't because I didn't stream and there was no way for me to have this as a game mode. So I looked about creating my own. At the time I had a server, a DayZ mod server that was doing quite well, but I wanted to move like the next evolution, which [00:04:00] was create my own mod and.

I spent about a month coding the initial DayZ Battle Royale mod, launched it, spent I think 48 hours restarting and locking servers by myself because there was no system to do that within Arm at the time. And then that was somewhat popular. I had, I think a few thousand players and then we evolved it into Arma 3, which was really where the Battle Royale game mode that most people know, which is there.

The plane with the parachutes and the ever decreasing blue zone. That's kind of where that was refined and born because in days of E Battle Royale, we had hordes of zombies. You know, if you were outside the zone, we just spawned zombies on you, which was fun because you'd be running into the zone with a group of zombies behind you.

But we kind of removed all that in Arma 3 and really slimmed it down to be a kind of a battle between players, which is why I built it in the first place. So then. I developed that for about a year, I think. And we had a solid player base. We'd get like a thousand concurrent players. So there was probably [00:05:00] tens of thousands of people that at least played my mod.

And we were very popular with streamers as well. And I was always very. Attentive to, to their needs, I would say I would, if they wanted a server for a sub Sunday or something like this, I would always make sure that I took after them how I could. And this gradually built a community around Battle Royale.

And then Jon Smedley approached me from Sony online entertainment, wanting to put my game mode into their new survival game, H1Z1. And that really is when sort of Battle Royale take him to the broader public. And I worked on that again for about a year or so as a consultant. And then when I left that project, quite literally a few, few weeks later, CH came in Korea, approached me and said, would I like to have a team to build my own version of Battle Royale?

And that was it. That was PUBG. 

Amy: So you really came out of more of an art background with photography and digital design. Yes. How did you learn enough programming to get started in this area? 

Brendan: So, I [00:06:00] also was a web designer because I, I learned my graphic design around the time of the web was like, you know, I was starting around the time of the bubble in 2000.

So in Coding in Armor, they have, I think it's SQF, I think is their code and it's. Kind of like a child of JavaScript and C or C plus it was, it was readable. I don't write code. I'm not very good at it, but I could understand it at least. And I could patch things together. And it took me a month of quite literally putting line breaks between every part of the code to see where stuff was breaking because Arma just doesn't run the file.

It's if it's, if it's not the right code. So I was begging, borrowing, using other people's code, asking people, look, I need to do this. And, and the community in Arma is quite helpful. They, they, if you, you, if you put in the work and they see that you're trying, they'll get, they'll give you a hand. So. That was kind of how I got into modding because it was very similar to JavaScript, which I kind of knew.

So, and again, my mod, my code is terrible. There's some comments in the [00:07:00] original Battle Royale code where they're kind of laughing at what I did, but it's still, it was, it was exciting to me because I, I still got to kind of create systems and figure out how those systems could be the most optimized. So yeah, I enjoyed it, but I'm just not a very good coder.

Amy: How did you get the inspiration for the Battle Royale mode that's so iconic and widely copied? 

Brendan: So I said, I got inspiration from the survivor games, but more that, that was human controlled and I didn't like that. And, um, I, I looked at a battle royale movie and then there you've got squares. I couldn't code squares.

They're quite hard to code in ARK. So circles were easier and there was already a bit of system code that. Did circles. So that's why we have circles in battle Royale, because I couldn't code squares. But also I figured it was a fairer way than trapping people in, in separate squares. Right. For me, when I was creating the game mode, it was providing this space where two players could figure out which was the best player and, and to do that, it couldn't be, you knew, like, With tsgo, you know, where every pixel on the map [00:08:00] is and where to throw things pixel perfect to land other places on the map.

I wanted to create the great opposite or the direct opposite, which was, you never knew where the map was going to finish. You never knew what weapons you'd be able to get because, well, you don't know what weapons are on the map. And it's about creating this space where. And it's almost like poker, right?

Where you, you all start at the same deck and depending on what cards you get, you can win. And in poker, like in battle royale, you don't necessarily have to have the best cards to win. Like you can outplay your opponent if you're smart. So for me, it was just creating this unique space, creating this space that was unique every time and providing the players with just a very basic set of systems that would give wonderful emergent gameplay.

Amy: So what I think we're talking about world building. Okay. Like how you build a world that will engender emergent gameplay. Mm hmm. How did you, how did you handle the world building aspects? I mean, like in PUBG, I think it's called [00:09:00] Eran, Erangel, right? It's Erangel. Tell us about coming up with and like bringing Erangel to life.

How do you approach world building? You probably collaborated with people. What's that like? 

Brendan: So that was fun because I, we were building a sort of Eastern European styled town or island in Korea where they really didn't have a lot of experience building, uh, you know, buildings. These kind of world, especially Korea is much more fantasy oriented and building a realistic world was a challenge, even like little basic things, like we were doing seals and the seals were done in a Korean way where you have a little dip.

So it could fill with water. And I was like, but we have ray in Eastern Europe. We don't need these little seals. They fill up water. Um, so all the field had to be redone because, because it wasn't authentic. But again, for me, building these kinds of worlds, it starts off with some good lore. It starts off with just trying to tell a story of the world and building the worlds for [00:10:00] PUBG.

Um, again, I, I borrowed a lot from Arma where it's, you're just building a realistic space. Like the world in Arma are based on real life locations for the most part. And they, they steal the land, sure. But they look like a real world. And with Erangel, which was named after my daughter, actually, Eran. It was designed as a relatively realistic space.

I posted a small video in the chat showing my initial sketches, which was done appropriate. It was just doing a rough layout and then we would just go and source images for, for this kind of area, what kind of fields you want, looking at borders. And there was just a lot of, we even went to the Czech Republic to test some on or some sound recording on, on some weapons, but it also gives a chance to have the art director go out and take pictures of forests and like this to kind of.

Give us a sense of what this reality looked like. Erangel was, when we first made it, it was quite bare. There wasn't much to it. It was like, there was buildings [00:11:00] in the middle of fields with no, no set dressing. So it was very sparse because for us, again, most game worlds have to have, I guess, lots of things to do, right? 

Things to entertain the player. Our world is just a world. It's an abandoned world and there's loot on it. And that's where we derive the depth of gameplay is, is from the loot you provide rather than having intractable things to do in the world. And when you're building a world like that, I think it's, not that it's easier than building a stereotypical, like sandbox open world, as in Assassin's Creed, where, you know, you have to worry about almost every square inch of the world.

When you're building a world where emergence takes precedence, You can worry about making a realistic looking world or, you know what I'm saying? It's, it's a different challenge because it's like I compare it to paintball. Like I can give you a set of paintball equipment and you can pretty much go and play paintball anywhere.

And I look at Battle Royale, it's the same. Like when I made an arm, I had a settings file at [00:12:00] start where if a new community map came out, I would change a few settings and then you could just drop the Battle Royale game mode. On top of this new map. So yeah, for me creating these kinds of worlds, it was, it was a challenge, but it was a lot of fun.

And I learned a lot from how stuff is made in the games industry because I had no clue before this. I really got to see how the sausage is. So much smoke and mirrors and praying that stuff's gonna work. It's been enlightening. 

Amy: Yeah. So joined up with Korea, you know, got elbow deep in all this stuff. PUBG turned into a massive worldwide hit.

But at the same time. You are still doing development, getting feedback from players, et cetera. PUBG is played by many, many, many, many people, but it's not for everyone. Right. There's people that love it. There's people that just, it's not their kind of game. So as you went through that experience. What did you learn about understanding who [00:13:00] you're designing a game for?

What did you learn about, okay, well, we're doing this. It's for these kinds of people. And we're going to listen to this kind of feedback. And then we're not going to try and make this game be for these other people. How did you, how did that, that kind of work play out in your experience? Just the arc of your experience creating and launching PUBG.

Brendan: We had a very vocal community, even from the modding days. Um, and that's been great because they're not afraid to tell you what's up and what they like and what they don't like. So yeah, having that kind of connection to Gili in my opinion, is super important. Um, now I do believe that as the creator of the game or creators of games, that you have to make sure your vision is solid.

And it's true because. You know, when we're making PUBG, we have a very specific type of game in mind. And we will listen to the community. We, we listened once where they, we were trying to make the game fairer and we were delaying the speed of [00:14:00] which you could drag stuff into your inventory from the ground to make it more equal to the F key.

And the community got back in touch and went, look, this is a mechanical skill. How quick I can drag stuff into my inventory and order it. This is a skill I can learn and I'm delaying this or trying to make it equal to the X key is not the right way to do things. We've been really lucky in that, you know, the most vocal people really care about the game.

And it is important to separate kind of those that want to make the game easier for themselves and those that just want to improve the game in general. Um, You know, our e sport world has been great. They created that what they call super settings, which is a standard PUBG rule set for e-sports. And that was the, all of the teams coming together and working with PUBG to, to come up with a set of rules that everyone felt was fair.

And, and, and it was just a shiny example of how, you know, community interactions can really. Pay off for, for your, for your, uh, game. 

Amy: That's an amazing [00:15:00] story. Can you flesh out that story a little bit? Cause I mean, and it sounds like they managed to do that without a doubt. 

Brendan: Well. 

Amy: Sorry, I couldn't resist. 

Brendan: Discord though.

Amy: Oh, well, there you go. Yeah. Yeah. So a community came up and bottom up agreed on their own rule set for e-sports. So they essentially created a metagame on top of the game, right? 

Brendan: What kind of, so we, the teams worked with PUBG internally to just, to kind of figure out what was the, the best setting or the best settings for, to make the game fair for most players.

Um, yeah, it was a collaborative effort. I wouldn't say it came from the bottom up, but it was, the teams really had a lot to do with making sure it was fair. There was a great deal of unity there, which was lovely to see, like the, the PUBG Esports community. Yeah. It is fantastic. I love them. They're, they're, they're so passionate about what they're doing and the game.

And they really love [00:16:00] it. So we're lucky to have them. Well, I say we're lucky to have them. They're lucky to have them since I'm no longer with PUBG. 

Amy: Right. And so let's use this segue to talk about what you're doing now and really how all of this knowledge and experience. That you've gained through this journey impacts what you're doing now.

So tell us about your current project. 

Brendan: Right. So when I first started up PLAYERUNKOWN Productions, I wanted to make big open worlds. That was, I'd been dreaming about this and seeing like ForgeLite 2 and some of these offices years ago and, and, and. Uh, you know, getting to the edge of the map in DayZ, I always wanted to go bigger.

And I thought, you know, if you could do a hundred by hundred kilometers of a map size, that opens up so many more interesting avenues of gameplay, like trade routes and really like a civilization level gameplay. But to do that, we found that we could do any scale of world because currently gaming, I've found is trapped in a 20 by 20 kilometer box because that's how [00:17:00] much space you can reasonably make with a massive team of artists within a reasonable amount of time.

So we looked in and we've, uh, like we spent time getting proper researchers. So we have like mathematicians and. Nuclear physicists and stuff on our research team. And we set about how, how do we do like massive world? So we're using machine learning on an engineering level to generate the world around the player as they move through it.

And our agents are deterministic and probably and persistent. So everyone sees the same world. So. What we're trying to do is build a plan, because that's what I think the metaverse is. It's like a digital place, right? It's like a 3D intercourse as as, as Tony would say, a Tony priest. That's, that's what I think it should be, and I just don't think anyone right now is thinking big enough.

You know, we're seeing some nice experiments, but they're role again within this small box. So I wanna build like a massive open world lobby. So what we're doing internally is we have. We're building an engine called Melba after Melba Roy Mouton, who was the [00:18:00] Associate Director of the Ames Research Center and was also the lead of the, the wonderful female mathematicians that got us to the moon.

So we're building this engine, which is a data oriented design, or sorry, a data oriented design and built as an ECS or an Entity Component System. So it's super efficient and it works really well on all, all cores rather than being, you know, restricted to a few. We're building this engine as a generic engine as much as possible.

So we can plug stuff in as it comes out. Uh, we're also building it to be hopefully open source and fully decentralized distributed because it has to be kind of like a. Foundation for the metaverse. So it has to be everywhere, right. And we can't hope to host it everywhere. So we want to make it open source.

So everyone can host a chunk of it or their own private, right. It's, it's again, it's just a foundation for, for these digital places. So Artemis then will be like, we have project Artemis and that's like the first layer of this, these worlds, I guess, right? It's like, we're building a planet that [00:19:00] will look.

Somewhat realistic. It'll have a few different game modes or ways to interact with it, but really it's just going to be a big world. And, and should you choose to play games in this world, we'll provide you with tools to do this. Or should you just want to wander around and find a beautiful spot and sit and listen to music where you can do that too?

Well, I just want to create this like digital place for folks to go and be creative, and I think that's what the Metaverse should be, which is a space You, me, everyone can go, can probably create some digital items and then use this space to either earn money or to create game modes and, and I think that's what Web3 is and not we're seeing right now, which is especially at least in gaming, I just see them as kind of skin ports, right, and ways to, to do brand partnerships to sell you skins.

And I just don't think that's what the metaverse is. 

Amy: Awesome. So there's a thread I want to pull up here. Which is that balance that every creative person, [00:20:00] game developer, web developer, product developer, everybody, we all have to do this balance. 

Brendan: Yeah. So right now we're really not in the kind of customer facing side because we're building an engine from scratch.

It's probably going to be another year or more before we kind of have some kind of a demo to show people. But. It's our aim and it's been my aim from the very start to involve the community from a very early stage. Right now, we're doing very technical dev blogs to kind of get those players that really understand what it is we're doing.

It, we're more doing it for hiring to try to get some good devs, but I really want to start building this kind of core layer of a community But that gets what you're doing and isn't afraid to read a bit of a technical article and then maybe learn something new. And, and it's these people that will then, you know, expand out onto the web and start to, you know, inform others about your project should it, you know, become a bit more popular.

I've always wanted to have the community close, but I said, like, I still [00:21:00] think I'm creating like a world for everyone, but I still think I need to have somewhat control over the world until it's relatively stable. Right. And we have to make sure that our vision is first implemented before we start giving control to people.

You know, as much as people will talk about blockchain, I think it does provide like DAOs and stuff. What I like about blockchain is that if you provide a way that everyone has just a single vote, it does allow your community to vote on where the money's going next. So if we're building a world and we're building it iteratively and adding layers and layers, once we have a, to a state where we're happy with, then maybe we can ask the community, look, do you want to add ballistics or do you want to add, you know, custom wind or something next?

And we can add, because I think that's important. I think if you're building a world for everyone, you have to kind of give them. The options to, to, to have a voice and have a say in where this world is going. Right. Look at the internet, you know, we have, you know, a body that [00:22:00] monitors and maintains it, right?

And then stuff is added only after a huge amount of consultation. And I think if we're building a metaverse, it has to have some of the same quality. 

Amy: Love it. Yeah, I think that's one of the realizations a lot of people working in Web DAOs are having now with something you just said, which is you have to make sure you've got a stable environment and world implemented correctly before you hand over control to the players.

Brendan: No, exactly. And, and even with like the land sales that are going on right now, they're selling land that doesn't exist yet. I'm going to build the land first. And even selling it is kind of, I don't want to do that because that just reinforces the courage inequalities in the world where the people with the money getting quick and early and then the people that come in last.

You know, are playing catch up. So with my planet, my world, if you want to have a bit of land in my world, you're probably going to have to go to that place [00:23:00] and claim it for yourself because, you know, maybe I will allow you to, to buy a car or something to get there quicker, but you really, I don't want to just reinforce the inequalities that we have in this world.

I want to give this digital place has to be fair and equal for everyone. And that alone brings its own challenge, but Hey, someone has to do it. 

Amy: Yeah. Wow. Wow. You do not shy away from the challenge. So your story is particularly fascinating because you were somebody who was, you know, multi talented, you had multiple interests, but you weren't a game deck and you learn through being engaged with communities through playing and then a ton through modding, somehow you managed to create.

You know, best selling PC and Xbox game of all time. What do you know now about game development, the realities of game development? Maybe just like one interesting thing. What do you know now, didn't [00:24:00] know then that you kind of wish you knew that like every all of us could benefit from?

Brendan: You're going to have to make a lot of sacrifices, you know, they, even the game that you've planned to start often doesn't get made because, and it's one of the sad reality that I found.

You know, before going on Early Access on, on Steam, you know, there's a lot of games that went there and failed and Early Access had this kind of bad, bad reputation. But after making a game and I'm seeing how hard it is, you know, people don't realize that like oftentimes it can be a simple thing that just holds development.

Like in on when we were developing it, doing an eight by eight kilometer Island, because it's only got a base 32 mass, it's, it's not super precise. So, you know, once you put a sniper scope off and you're further away than maybe a kilometer or two from the, The center of the map or from the zero, zero point, you start getting the crosshair start jittering along.

And that took us quite a few [00:25:00] months to solve. So I think what I learned was that, you know, the general public don't know enough about games. And, and often then game devs are painted in such a bad light for the wrong reasons, right? That it's they, they, I assume mock teams try their damnedest. To, to make the game they want to make, but oftentimes you run into these problems that, you know, under no fault of your own or through no fault of your own, you just, you can't solve.

And then, you know, you run out of funding and the team goes belly up. So, you know, what I, what I learned and what I'm trying to implement now is that we're trying to inform. Our users much more about what it is we're doing and getting them involved in the process of an area so they can share successes, but also experience fail and learn that, look, this is not a, an easy industry to be it.

You know, it's hard work. There's a lot of burnout. There's a, there's a lot of people leaving the industry now. So what I want to do and what I've learned is that I want to really try to inform the broader public about the process of [00:26:00] game devs, because I think it's important for them to know, because.

Maybe they'll understand how hard game devs have it sometimes.

Amy: Love it. Yeah. As someone who's worked both in game dev and in product and app dev, it's just orders of magnitude harder, partly because you need to integrate and balance and tune multiple systems. 

Brendan: Yep. No, especially like, so with PUBG, because it's emergent and because it's just a bunch of stuff that you can interact with and create your own story.

A lot of the designers did not understand that at the start. And they were told, oh, this is not the way we were told to make games or taught to make games. And I remember being in one meeting where they asked me, you know, what percentage of players do you think should have a sniper rifle by the final circle?

And I'm like, I have no clue. I guess the amount of players that decide they want to go crate hunting to get one. I mean, there's no way that I could tell that because I can't read the minds of the people. And emergent design in general [00:27:00] is very, you know, it's not loved by game designers because they don't have control.

It's you're giving the users a bunch of systems and you can't control what will happen. I remember when we suggested we put a flashbang into the game, someone on Discord said, Oh, I can't wait to throw it at someone driving a car and for them to crash and kill themselves. It took about two years, but I eventually saw a clip where someone threw a flashbang, they drove it to a tree and killed themselves.

And, you know, just that level of imagination that you can get by just giving the player a set of tools to me is, it keeps, it drives me. It's creating these like emergent places, these places where I don't control. And I just give you a set of tools and you create. That, that to me is very exciting.

Amy: We had, uh, Hilmar from EVE Online a couple of weeks ago, and he said something very similar. I think that EVE is another game that has a lot of emergent gameplay. And so the message I'm hearing from you, I just want to reinforce it. That's one of the hardest [00:28:00] games of mine, but if you look around, when you're able to pull it off, You can generate some deep retention and long, long live gameplay.

Brendan: Oh, look at, look at Valheim. Like this was a, some basic gameplay and then just a way to create a millennium falcon out of wood, right? I mean, they're just giving players these tools to be creative. You get amazing things. Look at, look at Rust, Minecraft, ARK, Survival, you know, and Valheim, games like this where they just give you a space to be creative and like, I mean, to some extent, I think, you know, Minecraft is almost like a Troto metaverse because it's just a bunch of interconnected worlds and that's what I think the metaverse should be is just a bunch of interconnected game worlds or just digital places and they're created either by companies or by, by people themselves.

Amy: Yeah, the thing is they have to have some sort of systems built into it and systems [00:29:00] always will have incentives and so, you know, it's, and none of us can fully predict what's going to have, but we can try and build the right incentives into our systems. 

Brendan: No, exactly. This is not about making money. You know, for me, this is about providing this digital place because I believe this is an important thing to do.

And that might make me sound a bit like a bit zealous, but I really think. If you're making the Metaverse to make money or to raise the price of your coin or to be the next hype thing, it's not the right reason. It's, you know, I don't care about brand partnerships with Snoop or with Gucci. You know, they'll be able to just interact with the world because there will be tools there for them to do it.

If they want to sell something in our world, they're free to, but I won't be chasing them for brand partnerships because that's not what the Metaverse is. Right. It's. Right now, I just see, as I said, like there are portals to sell you skins. And, um, that's not the metaverse, is it? Well. 

Amy: Oh, I love that. No, it's like gauntlet [00:30:00] throne.

So, first of all, Brendan, I want to thank you so much for hanging out with us and sharing your stories and your wisdom. Just, it's fantastic. You just made my week, my month. 

Brendan: Oh, thank you so much, Amy, Amy Jo. I honestly think the fact that you think I'm sharing wisdom is, is, it's an honor. That's honestly, sometimes I think I'm just babbling my, I have these crazy dreams.

And listen, if I can make it, I think it'll be an interesting space. If not, I'll. Just have a big world all to myself, right. And I think I said like when we were down here in Spain, it's a realization I came to, which was, you know, we have, I call it an abundance of silence here. And a lot of people don't.

And I think giving players this, or people, this space to escape to where you can put on headphones and just be in this beautiful world where there's all kinds of interesting things to do is something that's going to become more and more important as we get further into the future, because it really, it doesn't look [00:31:00] great for the planet in my opinion.

So I think, you know, having these spaces that we can, you know, come together and still have kind of shared experiences is something very important for the future. 

Amy: I have one last question I can't resist asking. You've really shared today your vision of the metaverse, which is wonderful. I love it. People that are very enamored of the metaverse and want to build it often have a Canon text that they sort of referenced.

There's Ready Player One, there's Snow Crash. Sometimes there's something else. Do you have that Canon reference that metaverse? 

Brendan: No. Um, so I watched Ready Player One. I haven't read the book. Um, It, for me, it was like, I was watching it going, that's what's in my head. And then not so much as it was more kind of a validation of the ideas I had.

Right. And I I've read since Ray Clairvoyant and Snow Crash and I [00:32:00] don't know, like Matthew Balls, a wonderful, wonderful, uh, writer on all things metaverse. For me, it's just this. It's trying to think about it and what I think is like the fairest, um, best way to do this for everyone. And I think, yeah, so I, I, I try to keep my thoughts pure.

If that makes sense. It's like, I don't want to look for too many other people's opinions just yet, because I'm still trying to figure out what it is I want from the metaverse or, or what I think the metaverse should be. So I have no real inspirations only than I want to create this massive place. 

Amy: Right.

Brendan: And knowing what that place is is still being worked at. 

Amy: Um, thank you so much. I hope that we get to connect again soon. Let me know if there's any way I can be helpful to you. 

Brendan: Yeah. Thanks for all the questions guys. It was great. Really. Um, I should say like, I, I'm not so much doom and gloom on the metaverse.

I think there's some very interesting projects in web three and I do think blockchain is such important tech for, [00:33:00] for places like the Metaverse, right? Because it, it really decentralizes things and it has to be this way. It is right now there's a lot of centralization, but you know, I still think it's such a powerful bit of tech that can give control, at least in some part, back to the community as a whole.

Yeah. So excited to see what you guys were. 

Amy: Awesome. Thanks everyone. Talk to you soon, Brendan, and I'll see you all soon. 

Brendan: Thanks so much. 

DJ: Thanks for listening to Getting2Alpha with Amy Jo Kim, the shows that help you innovate faster and smarter. Be sure to check out our website, getting2alpha.Com. That's getting2alpha.Com for more great resources and podcast episodes.