Oh welcome to gossip about gossip. Powered by Hedera Hashgraph. And each episode will cut through the hype of blockchain promises and explore real world examples of organizations creating the next generation of decentralized applications, which will bring trust back to the internet for us all. Hello everyone, and welcome to the latest episode of gossip about gossip, the podcast where we talk about real world applications of distributed ledger technology. My name is Zenobia Gottschalk and I'm the SVP of communications here at World's labs, helping to grow the Hedera ecosystem. Today, I am delighted to be joined by Michael Bauer from lycos. And Michael, there is a story behind that name. Welcome and can you share a little bit of that with us? Yes, zenobia, Thank you so much. It's great to be here and it's a pleasure to talk to you about with us today. Yeah, the story behind the ethos is that really it's kind of a play on lithos, which means stone in Latin. My wife, when we were kind of I told her I was thinking about calling the company lithos. We kind of looked at if the URLs were available or if the company was available and that name wasn't. And she played with an idea and she added an extra I and I kind of love that extra eye because it actually created a bunch of really interesting symbolism and also kind of from just a pronunciation, the Nintendo we kind of taught us the two I's actually reads as e, so lithos kind of just sounds really great. And again, being that it comes from the Latin derivative of stone. The idea behind that is that great masterpieces are kind of carved out from stone and they're kind of meticulously tapped away by artists and great craftspeople. So that's the kind of spirit behind those. Fantastic Yes. And who doesn't have great memories of the we? So tell me, you've been in the gaming industry a long time. What made you want to start the company and what's the mission and vision behind it? Yeah, I, I, I find myself always liking kind of attracted to New spaces where there are kind of interesting opportunities to engage with players and fans and people in unique ways and to grow and kind of converge technology and art. And I feel like there's no better time and no better place to do that. Right now with dot technology, I think there's a lot of really interesting concepts that people are exploring in idea and it reminds me, you know, at the beginning of major disruptive kind of console releases like the we is a good example when they first kind of showed the saw this little kind of almost like remote controller which is very odd for most people, but as they, you know, handed it to people that were not gamers, the reason that we started to attract a larger, wider, non-core gaming audience was because of that kind of strange control device. They actually moved it away from this kind of very bulky control device with lots of buttons on it to something very simplified and you use your arms, right? So I feel like those kinds of disruptive technologies create really interesting innovations that never really go away. They kind evolve from that. We still see a lot of the stuff that came from the we today in this case. I think what's wonderful about Dell technology is kind of evolving social interactions and empowering communities of players and also connecting entertainment worlds. That's what the ethos really wants to do. So we want to kind of build really powerful entertainment games that are narrative driven, but we also want to connect them outside of games into areas of television and film and social media platforms and digital comics. And we want them all to kind of play together and then incentivize each other, but all kind of feeding the gaming ecosystem. Yeah and you've, you know, you started off. And you're going to have experiences, it sounds like, for people who want to kind of meet you wherever they are in their gaming journey. Right? people who want to go the traditional route as well as use newer capabilities. Yeah, I know. Exactly right. So the focus is we come from games, we come from film, we come from these experiences, these traditional mediums, and we want to celebrate that still. So we want to take all the knowledge of the last 20 plus years of making games and building entertainment and not leave that behind. We we want to create the experiences that still support those spaces that we love very much. But then we want to kind of also have this additive layer. And the additive layer is empowering the audiences and the players to have ownership and what does that mean and challenge that. And then also have this other variable of connectivity. And as we sort of explore the world of ashfall, we'll start to expose what that means. And I think right now it's a little bit unclear intentionally because we're still discovering and we're still building and we're still inventing. But as the development of this game goes forward, I think it'll become much clearer to audiences and fans and players what our intent is. And again, in the aspirational sense that we're going to succeed, we always plan for success, that you'll actually get to experience these things that we have these really ambitious visions for. And what is the world of ashfall? What's the vision there? Yes so the world of ashfall is a traditional kind of a core triple-a experience that is very much character focused and story focused. And in this case, you can kind of see like we're taking something that's like some modern mythology. If we're not good denizens of the planet and we continue to ignore the signs of global warming and we don't take care of the planet, then there are consequences to that. Right? and so the world, in a near-future sense not, you know, it's reasonably several of years away in this theoretical world of Earth. You know, the Ring of Fire is erupting because global warming is kind of taking its toll on the planet. And in the setting of the Pacific Northwest, we see the impact of this global warming has had on that region where our story takes place. And so we see the Mount Rainier constantly erupting. We see lightning storms, we see acid rain, we see flooding and all the stuff that our worst nightmares from a planet that we live in. And also we see sort of a politically divided, regional kind of thing happening where almost like city-states start to pop up, we might see like 25 different states that have kind of come divided in ideologies and factions. And so you've got this kind of hostile world and these political factions of people fighting with each other. And then the main character, ash, is kind of a modern day superhero. He's Native American by background, and he's grown up in this world. And his hope is to help reunite the world and help to heal the planet. And it's kind of a positive, uplifting story. That is something that I think we kind of want. Right so in this world, that is still quite, quite something we don't want to see. We still have heroes kind of rising in those environments and trying to bring everybody back together. And I think there's a misperception that all blockchains are distributed, ledgers are highly energy consumptive. I would imagine that given the storyline and that arc, that it was probably pretty important for you to find one that was carbon neutral, carbon negative. Yeah it was critical. Right so that's part of we would look pretty bad, right. Trying to build some story about global warming and then picking a technology partner, which was sort of heading in that direction. Right so the opposite is exactly what we want. We want to bring people into the technologies that are green and are allowing for innovation to happen in a meaningful way so that we're not stopping our advancement technologically, but not at the cost of the planet. And so I love that. I love the fact that we can do this story and still kind of express these real dangers while still being responsible. And I think that's fantastic. And there is such an amazing partner for us to be in that regard. And you all recently you had a very successful sale in terms of some early access experiences for some of your users. Can you share with us a little more about that? Yeah so we released two digital assets. One is or tokens. One is we're calling it the founders token and we basically that allows access to the community. We're going to be kind of developing ashfall in a very Web3 kind of communal way. We want to open the curtain a little bit and expose people to how these kind of massively complicated games are made. And so we're going to start kind of putting the kinds of access to development that we believe people have not seen. And so we want to have that. If you're a token holder, you'll be able to see how this game is being developed and have access and exclusive AMA'S and conversations and be able to challenge an early test, start the game and experience it throughout the journey of development, in addition to also having other rewards that are meaningful to the community. John is a painter and a true kind of Renaissance artist. Not only is he making games, but he's doing these amazing. He's done this amazing oil painting of the world of asphalt. That's a reward we want to give to one of the token holders that randomly. Right and then another one is we've got this digital comic that will also be a token that will be able to give rewards to the players that digital comic. And so we know who owns it. They'll have a signed identity and then we'll be able to kind of reward them through again, access or objects or just valuable things that we build and we feel are things that are really going to make the world, the entertainment world and the game world more meaningful. Yeah, it sounds like they make it a much more immersive, sort of shared experience right from the beginning. That's yeah, that's our goal. And one thing I'm really excited about is that in this we want to create these really exceptionally high quality experiences. John wrote his writing. He wrote the first issue of the comic book, and there will be more and he's going to write all of them. And the cover artist is a very, very well known comic book artist of from when I was reading comic books in the 90s. His name is Brett booth, and it was so great to be able to bring him in. And he kind of did the first issue for us, and that's in the comic world, that's such a meaningful thing. When you do issue number one of a comic, it's like really big deal and the interior artist is actually equally as veteran and compelling. And we haven't revealed who the interior artist yet is. We're going to release that in the next coming weeks. But we're really excited that the first issue is going to kind of be an inaugural kind of celebration of the narrative and World of ashfall and Ar and your first entry point into this world that we want to touch in all of these different mediums, right? So it will be in comics and in the game and then in television and film and music and social media. So it's the goal is to really take us to the future of connected experiences. Yeah, it sounds like you're thinking about all the different ways that community can connect together. And as you think about what's next. So obviously you have announced the launch. You've successfully engaged the community early on. What can they expect to see out of you next 6 to 12 months? More and more and more so. More engagement, more connection, more development of the game, more release of the art, more, you know, release of the core prototypes and game functions that are going to be kind of meaningful into the center of the game. More story, more comics, and then more just a dialogue, right? So the wonderful thing that I'm really loving is we got a really amazing response from the announce, I feel like for a new company, especially in an unexplored space with a little bit of controversy here. But I think that people are starting to see what the real potential in the space is. And I think that's our key is to kind of bring people along, the old players of traditional formats and new players that are waiting for these kinds of experiences to show up. And so our hope is to kind of bridge these two pieces together and make something really great. And, you know, in only two weeks, I think our Twitter has got 2,500 followers. That's pretty great for a new studio. So we're really, really excited about that. We've got our Discord. The other day I was in there and there's about 500 or 600 people. And again, for something that's only a few weeks old, that's pretty exceptional. And we just want to continue to grow that. We're going to bring in more influencers that, you know, that are authentically connected to the kinds of things that we want to do and work closely with them to help bring connections to the social platforms that are going to lead to the kinds of connected experiences that we want as well. So goal is like Twitch and Twitter and TikTok and YouTube. All of these platforms are really, really important to us. Fantastic Michael, it sounds like you have thought of a little something for everyone as we wrap up. Anything else you'd like to share with this Hedera community? No, just that I have been incredibly touched by how well the community has been accepting of this, this new company and this new objective. There's been a tremendous level of support. We want to just continue to be a great partner for Hedera and the community and honor what the intention and what I think the potential is for this Hedera network. And so we really want to be good partners there and maximize the potential of what people want to see out of it. Released from the gaming space. This community is the best. Well, Michael, Thank you so much for sharing your journey so far with us. We hope that you will come back and keep us updated on your progress. And we wish you all the best. We look forward to hearing more. Thanks it was really my pleasure, Zenobia. Thanks for having me. All right. Take care.
