Waffles or Pancakes?

Just home from the Roblox Developers Conference! It was an incredible gathering of developers, artists, brands and many others, like us, who are interested in building in this community of ~80 million DAUs. We are working on a deeper compilation of insights but as a bigger picture comment, we were incredibly impressed with the authenticity of the Roblox management team and the culture of transparency that this gathering embodied. Over many years of observing, analyzing and interacting with public company C-suites, I don't remember a public market CEO sitting on stage and inviting roughly 100 people across the community to line up and ask him or her literally anything, and then to answer with such genuine care and detail. Many questions were technical while others were playful gen alpha questions like, “waffles or pancakes?” or whether CEO Dave Baszuki could do “Pose 28” out of the insanely popular Roblox fashion runway game, Dress to Impress. (He did it!)

One of our original and most important mantras is ‘merge onto the highway of behavior that is already happening’ and this is a great example of it - ask any 8-14 year old in your life! In fact, according to Roblox’s Q423 report, the 17-24 cohort comprises 23% of the DAU base.?

We have been on the road for about a month, and this felt like a good moment to touch base before we take off for Singapore on Sunday. Before I dive in, our new games publisher, Dot Play, has new socials - please follow us. If you will be at Token 2049 next week in Singapore, I hope you will join the Mythical Games’ Mythos Summit. CEO John Linden and I will host a discussion about gaming, in the context of web3, AI, new games like Pudgy Penguins, and sports partnerships, such as Mythical partnership with the NFL - in short, The Future of Gaming.? Also, Polkadot Decoded is taking place on the 16-17th, and you can register for the event here. Let’s meet up in Singapore!?

The National Football League (NFL) season also kicked off a few days ago, and Mythical’s game, NFL Rivals, became the official game of the Kansas City Chiefs. This is significant because the Kansas City Chiefs, with superstar players Travis Kelce and Patrick Mahomes, have won the Super Bowl, the most valuable media property in the US, three of the last five years. The Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl win in 2024 is important because it drew 123.7 million average viewers, the largest TV audience on record, according to Nielsen.

This partnership is also significant because NFL Rivals is a mass market mobile game with a reach of five million downloads across mobile app stores. Interestingly, this is not a “blockchain game” but rather a fun, mobile game, which taps into the technology to make the game more fun. In fact, players don’t even need to know the words blockchain, NFT, and certainly not crypto.?

Our entire team was in Cologne at Gamescom 2024 where we hosted an insightful brainstorm on the Future of Gaming. Jung Suh gave some interesting insight into Mythical’s pioneering work to allow games that integrate blockchain technology into the Google and iOS app stores.?

We also had the opportunity to catch up with Vlad Rannik, CEO of CM Games and creator of racing game Nitro Nation, which has garnered downloads of over 400 million people. His articulation of ‘why blockchain?’ really resonated with us! Here it is.

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Let’s Celebrate Conor Daly’s Podium Win in Kansas City!

On the topic of car racing, we also wanted to flag another Polkadot Superstar, Indy500 racer Conor Daly, who will be racing at the Kansas Speedway on Friday, September 27th. Everything is up to date in Kansas City!?

Separately, congratulations to Conor are in order - for the first time in eight years, he was back on an IndyCar podium at Milwaukee Mile!

• Conor was awarded Fastest Mover of the Race with 51 on-track passes
• The win represented the first podium for the Juncos Hollinger Racing INDYCAR SERIES team?
• Fun Fact: In 1987, Conor’s Dad, Derek scored a third-place finish at the Milwaukee Mile as well. It seems the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree!

The reason we are generally excited about Conor Daly is that he is generally excited about Dot Play, Polkadot and gaming. In 2023, the racing games market was valued at $2.17 billion, growing about 10% per year. According to Newzoo, about a quarter of gamers consider racing to be one of their favorite genres.

Even though racing games are not considered the newest, hottest genre in gaming, we believe they are particularly well-suited to digital asset-backed games because developers create realistic physics and graphics, with detailed parts, cars, and environments to emulate the experience of real-world racing.

Will Web3 Solve a Coming Crisis of Inauthenticity?

During our industry brainstorm in Cologne and at Alex Tarrand /STYNGER-hosted discussion on music, including Gamefam , Universal Music, Spaceport.xyz , Juno Capital Partners LLP , James Purell and others, there was broad agreement that AI will drive an explosion of digital assets. We believe this will coincide with an explosion of inauthenticity and a human struggle to verify in digital spaces. As we hit crisis moments, could people ask, ‘what could we use to verify rights around digital assets’ and ‘could web3 technologies be viewed as a solution to crises of authenticity?’ In many ways, this would take us back to our original thesis behind NFTs and their usage in games in 2017. As we build mass market games and experiences, we are exploring IP rights protection for the IP we are bringing to the table - our New Superstars. If you have ideas that we should be exploring, please reach out and let us know!

Did I already say that Dot Play has new socials and follow us?! Have a wonderful evening!

The Signum Growth / Dot Play Team

Here I am on the Roblox red carpet with CEO of Dubit , Matthew Warneford , and his amazing team!