Carlos Roldan, CEO & Co founder of Satoshi’s Games, joins me to talk about why he’s excited about Lightning powered gaming.

We talk:

• Why he got into Lightning
• Bitcoin enabled gaming
• Making it multi platform and beautiful
• Lessons learned with Satoshi’s Place
• Schedule going forward with Lightnite
• Where you can get Lightnite

Carlos Links:

• Lightnite: https://lightnite.io/ref=slp
• Twitter: @whiteyhat
• Satoshi’s Games: https://satoshis.games/
• Satoshi’s Games Twitter: @SatoshisGames

Sponsor links:

• Kraken
• Unchained Capital
• CypherWheel by CypherSafe
• SwanBitcoin

Stephan Livera links:

• Show notes and website
• Follow me on twitter @stephanlivera
• Subscribe to the podcast
• Patreon @stephanlivera

Podcast Transcript:

Stephan Livera:

Carlos, welcome to the show.

Carlos Roldan:

Hi, I’m very happy to be here, thank you very much.

Stephan Livera:

Carlos, I’ve had the chance to meet you recently at the well not recently at the lightning conference and also Baltic HoneyBadger. I know you’re doing a lot of cool work with Satoshi’s games and also Lightnite. So I’d love to jump into all of that. And I know obviously you’re big into lightning, so tell us why are you into lightning?

Carlos Roldan:

When I suffered the first application of lightning, that was a Lightning (correction: Satoshi’s) place from Koala (LightningK0ala), I just, you know, I just instantly realize the power of lightning to make gaming experiences and to create circular economies within games that I think, in my opinion, that’s the biggest strength that can bring for the product development in the gaming area.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah. And did you play a lot of games yourself and that was why you wanted to work into that field?

Carlos Roldan:

Yeah, I was coming from a gaming background. I was in playing games and I’ve been into games and then just when I just jump in to Lightning and I saw the potential then everything fit together. So it was like a perfect match.

Stephan Livera:

Awesome. And I know you’ve got a little bit of history in the space as well that you were working on different projects and so on before starting Satoshi’s game. So why did you start Satoshi’s games and when did you start it?

Carlos Roldan:

So it all just started like back one year and a half ago and that’s the reason we’re starting to get in touch more with the technology, the behind lightning network. So I actually learned myself about lightning and then also as a test proof. So I actually benchmark how lightning was in games. So I had some data and results after, doing it. And I wanted to know if there was actually a market behind that. And that was the reason why I actually jump into a proof of concept, which is basically a mini clip, website of Bitcoin games?

Stephan Livera:

And you’ve got a range of games there. Tell us a little bit about what listeners will see when they go to Satoshi’s games website.

Carlos Roldan:

So basically they all have like replicas of famous or popular games that they’ve been having, you know, a success in the past, but they are now in a, they’ve been bitcoinised so basically they have some eight BIP style and they also have some, some game mechanics that they have more incentives to play. So kind of, satsback or Satoshi is hiding the game, and things like that or you’re gonna compete against others and then when you kill another opponent, you get their satoshis or apart of it. So that’s what you mostly find. So you find versions of super Mario or you find versions of Flappy Crypto, you have games like Lightning Agar which is this multiplayer game that we’re talking about.

Stephan Livera:

Yes, a lightning agar is a really interesting one as well. That’s the one where you kind of walk around and you are kind of accumulating other pieces and then you all go and fight each other at the end. Really funny game. And you got Super Bro as well, right? Like a Mario version where you kind of go along and pick up sats and so on. So another interesting thing about Satoshi’s games that I noticed is it has an interesting way of setting up your account. How do you set up your account there?

Carlos Roldan:

So basically you have a few ways, none of them ask you for an email password because in this project I wanted to just get rid of the actual standard and there are a few ways. One of it is actually doing a proof of payment. Basically if you pay an invoice you actually make it to have an account and then you are later persistent there, which basically entitles you to have avatars or customise your account. The next sort of reason is to actually use a quality filter so I can have an account in Satoshi’s games also gives you access to play in bitcoin games and which is there’s a more premium feature of the platform. And the other and the reason where I put this system where you can pay an invoice, something as simple as that. It’s interesting because it brings a quality filter. What I first test the user, their capability to do the work. So you know, they have an experience and they are going to have no friction when interacting with, we can gain some view, but they previously know how to do a transaction on that day.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah, I see. So it’s a bit of a test. If you can’t successfully make a payment for 1000 sats then you might not be able to withdraw or deposit lightning, Bitcoins over lightning into the website when you’re playing and withdrawing and so on. Interesting stuff. And so I noticed as well when you do that, so you pay 1000 sats, so at the time of recording that’s around 10 cents or whatever. And so then you have to copy that and keep that somewhere because that is your actual account.

Carlos Roldan:

Yeah. You’ll have like a seed. So basically you can import or export your account and play in different devices and yeah. So you can have a more interoperability game experience within the platform. But again, that was like more like a benchmark because we wanted to do a test so we can actually prove that lightning games are worth it and not only before the consumer has worked for the provider and if that’s motivation or that this was starting to find it out so we can actually focus on a bigger strategy to make it happen in a more dynamic and more attractive way with a different game. And yeah, that was it.

Stephan Livera:

Great. And so can you tell us a little bit about how you’re thinking more broadly about how Satoshi’s games in forms your future projects and other ideas around gaming and lightning network?

Carlos Roldan:

We had like a high demand of game developers that they saw in Satoshi’s games they wanted to add other games or they want to add bitcoin. So that was one of the cases where we actually, had an impact on our road. So we started to think how to develop products or services where, this makes it easier to on other developers that actually implement that into the games or put their games into their website. However, due to the core architecture, it was a prototype. It wasn’t an actual product to be fully delivered, it wasn’t easy to get that into Satoshi’s games. Then we saw as well a high demand of users interacting that what they wanted to do is you’re, using Satoshis as their collateral were playing to other opponents. If that actually results earning the opponent’s stats which is the case of Lightning Agar. Because that was a hit that was really the best game that everyone reported in the platform. They wanted to focus on a that had the same strategy. And actually had impact on the vision of creating a different product out of Satoshi’s games.

Stephan Livera:

I think this probably just goes without saying that obviously the lightning community right now is relatively small. Obviously you can’t make a business that only serves, current day, Bitcoin, lightning enthusiasts. It’s got to be a game that actually appeals to people who are not necessarily into Bitcoin and lightning. So how are you thinking about ways to get to that kind of audience?

Carlos Roldan:

Yeah, so first, I think it has to be progressive from the sense that we want to, I mean that’s a strategy we’re following right now. We are not actually targeting where we are. We’re working on Litenight, which is this game that is the star product that we put all of our efforts and resources on this at the moment on this game. It’s a Battle Royal. It’s very classic to this kind of games. Like fortnight, H1Z1 or PUBG where you know, these guys jump into a room and they play and kill each other for a time. And so this kind is, we’re actually talking about this trending topic. So we’re actually play using a game that is a globally, accepted as a success and then we’re actually changing kind of the incentives mechanics to bring different strategies for the gamer that they actually incentivize more the game play.

Carlos Roldan:

So basically we are making a game that is a global success as a standard and then we’re adding the results that they were the most attractive results of Lightning Agar and Satoshi’s games into that game. So it’s interesting this question because they we want to onboard a traditional gamers and users that they are, aside from the crypto community, we first need to give them, we need to sell them the problem that they are actually experiencing, which some of them they don’t see it yet. And that’s the actual challenge trying to onboard them, , because you have to demonstrate that currently they are consuming a product that doesn’t completely satisfy them or did you provide them with something better? Something basic that happened with blockbuster in Netflix when they come together [inaudible],

Stephan Livera:

Maybe this is like the Henry Ford. If I asked them what they wanted, they would have asked for a faster horse. Right? But maybe there’s an appeal there for people to play something like fortnite, but with the, the ability to make money and make sats out of it. And then obviously there’s all the in game items and so on. So can you give us another what, what will Lightnite look like when we’re playing it?

Carlos Roldan:

So the first that I want to emphasize is about the gaming experience. Other than the economy of the game or the integration. I mean it has to get beautiful experience. It has to be as beautiful as possible and it has to maximize the gaming experience. And it doesn’t have to be like currently blockchain games that they are, you know, blockchain all over the place. 90% of the game is blockchain. And then they have some gaming experience, which is really because we want to make the game, an entire product that together with that animation, the design, the easter eggs, the game mechanics and then the bitcoin integration as all of them make up the beautifulness of the game. So we think this is very important because it doesn’t matter where the skins are stored or it doesn’t matter where they be.

Carlos Roldan:

Integration happens if there is not actually an incentive to assume the product. So the actual issue happens from the scratch, from the architectural, development of the game mechanics. So we actually got together and design a game where we prioritize and maximize the secret economies of every single role in the game. Usually when you actually started gaming, when you start the game. You would say that it’s a normal game in the sense that this is a classical beautiful game like Fortnite or any other kind of game that is beautiful, but it also brings additional capabilities to the gamer that, affects directly to the motivation to play to the incentives that they are integrating.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah. And definitely I was quite excited when I saw the video and the promotional material that you and the team have put out. Can you tell us a little bit about, the journey that you’re going on and what sort of timelines you’re working on? As I understand there’s the pre sale, I made an order on the presale. And can you tell us a bit about the schedule that you’re operating on?

Carlos Roldan:

Yeah, so we’re actually, we’re gonna go for, I am announcing their first name, their prayer like a few weeks ago we got a bit delayed and we are actually actually lots in this month. So hopefully with this, and in the next week we are launching singleplayer which is basically a minimal prototype that puts together all of the core features, of the user controller that can actually play on the area. Some Southern winds on the sign, some lightning integrations about the visual effects. Then we’re actually going for the next month to launch the first prototype of the multiplayer where we can actually allow users to play, real time much bigger. And then over the summer where we keep working on the game polishing and I think adding more Bitcoin meta game features on the game so we would be doing more iterations of their user interface and will be creating better systems for the shop which is actually the screen that the user sees in the on improving basically what is it is based on the community feedback because we are releasing early, we are focusing on our early release and then we are going to go through an open development strategy.

Carlos Roldan:

Where we’re going to build based on what the community asks and demands. And then by the end of the year we’ll be actually doing a global launch in the sense that we are actually adding support for mobile and for any consoles that we are going to aim for as well as the next iterations of the game will include support for virtual reality and other things that we like and we would like to explore. But that would be way forward you know, second Q or third quarter of 2021.

Stephan Livera:

Will it be primarily a PC game, but then you’ll also have a mobile version with it or what’s the thinking around cross-platform?

Carlos Roldan:

Yeah, the strategy is to have a desktop game where it’s in the PC and you play in order to do that, once the game is in high quality standards due to the iterations of the development and it goes out of the beta. Then it would come out as an officer game on mobile PlayStation, on Nintendo, all of these all of these devices that are also attractive for traditional gamers. Yeah.

Stephan Livera:

And is it going to be like, you know, you’re a PC gamer but you can also be playing with someone on mobile?

Carlos Roldan:

Yeah, I mean we wanted to make it as us much interoperable as possible and we want to work to maximise that. So that’s how we’re focused on that. That’s how we targeted, that’s an end goal to make it possible.

Stephan Livera:

Cool. And so, okay, so I mean it’s a shooting game. Can you talk us through what are some of the typical game modes going to be? Is it going to be like a death match style or capture the flag or last man standing? Like what’s the thinking there?

Carlos Roldan:

So all of those things that you described, we call them like missions and this is our way of missions that we can include and they will. Interesting thing is that users can claim and demand missions, that they actually canpropose and then we’re open to hear that and we are open to see if actually, you know, if they vote for the mission then we can develop them and make it happen. But all of these kind of challenges or missions like, you know, capture the flag, or go to this point or kill one specific guy of the game. They are into something we call the casual mode, which is something that is not competitive at all. And you just go there, play on. Maybe if you complete some set of missions, then you get rewarded with skins sats. That’s cool. That’s, but that, this is not new.

Carlos Roldan:

We’re not making something new here it’s the same as happens in fortnight or other games where basically you play in a death match in a room and then you can either go and follow the missions or just have fun playing that. That’s cool. But that’s something that we actually think that is going to be a high demand for that, but we’re bringing something new on and this is what I actually want to emphasize because they think is in my opinion the TNT it’s like the bomb of the game. Something that it has not been done before. And let me explain the concept. So in order to explain the concept first I need to know set it up some to differentiate between fortnite and PUBG and or of these games and Lightnite. Since our mission, the sense the company mission is bringing in a circular economies, within gaming experiences, we actually started out with that we are following to make this happen is that as well as you can buy items in the store, you can sell those items and as well as you can sell those items to any other user, you can actually withdraw your profits in lightning.

Carlos Roldan:

And this actually, close the circle because in other platforms like steam with the games or fortnight, you can not actually sell their items to any other players. In case you can like Counter Strike, there is a community marketplace. You cannot actually withdraw the profits because basically you get the steam balance which is a steam coin. That is basically database coin. So the money stays there. So it’s like alinear economy going from the consumer to the provider and that’s the end of the story. We don’t want to do that and we are not actually doing it. We are actually closing the circle. So we start with this actually game mechanics where you can have this circular economy within the game. Then we explored a brilliant mode that can catch up with e-sports because Battle Royale have not

Carlos Roldan:

actually catch up very much with e sports. In the sense that, they go for a more social aspect, which includes going influencers and streamers. Put that together in a room and make something social but not something very, very competitive or skill based. I’m probably going to go to the skins and mechanics or they are the actually skill-based mechanics of the game. The way we’re actually overcoming this is doing a game mode where we’ve got an arena basically you’re jump in to this arena with guys and when this, when you’re jumping with the matchmaking process, especially with guys of the same level. So there’s a rank system and the same value of the items that you currently are wearing. So this is interesting to analyze because for this arena game, I bring my, skin that cost X and my hat, that cost Y then I get paired with other players that have same values bring to the game and the same level.

Carlos Roldan:

So then we are all together in this room we are in the map playing like me, if I’m playing solo or with a squad, if I get killed, my items dropped to the floor. I’ve lost them. I mean I actually brought them at the beginning as a collateral. But now I lost my game and they are in the floor and if any other player comes and grabs the load of the user and make it to win they actually have now in inventory. So now they can actually play for a reason but it’s really skill based strategies because in a fraction of second we’re actually you are grabbing the loot of a dead player project you have to choose because you have a backpack that has a limited amount of slots and then you have to take the wise decision where you want to have a better upgrade of gun that that user may have or a skin that is so valuable because maybe the biggest, the most greedy option is not the most strategic option. Something very interesting making a point of discussion this year is that if no one grabs that loot and it stays on the game,and the game is finished then that actually unit is disappeared. Affecting the total supply of that specific asset and making the market on the, the demand and the supply about that price. Making a behavior, where the actual first assets of the first season passes, they get more, more rewarded, they increase in value over time.

Stephan Livera:

Then basically you go into this death match and obviously that’s like an opt in style and if you lose your gear then basically you’ve just, you’ve lost your gear and it’s kind of like a winner takes all system. But as you were saying, there’s still a strategic element of what items that person would pick up because they’ve only got limited space and they still want to be able to win the match. So does that mean it’d be like really expensive to play each round or like how would that work?

Carlos Roldan:

No, no, no. Girst, I didn’t mention this, but this is up to the user, I mean I’m not making this aggressive. So users can just go and play the casual mode where mission style and it’s basically like a fortnight style game. They have nothing to lose, nothing to win. Maybe if you get easter eggs and maybe you’ll get some things but it isn’t the high reward. It’s an incentive reward it’s a symbolic reward here. Here you know what you wanna play and you can choose the actual value of your skins because those are in the market and market decides what costs. So you can bring maybe a few assets that they maybe in total are $5 worth or maybe you can actually bring your $100 assets that they are high demanded assets for example. Each asset has a different type.

Carlos Roldan:

We have three types of assets. We have the normal assets basically those assets that it doesn’t have any value at all in the sense that they are limited so there is unlimited of this stock and then there are assets that they are premium that they are 500 units and once the assets are 100 and below they are rare. And then you have the other exception of case where assets can be legendary. Which means that because it happened to be rare from one state there was someone, so many guys playing Battle Royale up to the exceptional case that there is only one guy standing with an asset making only one unit and making the space to that guy to decide what’s the price of that asset. But there is no, I mean, we’re making this as a frictionless experience. So you said it doesn’t that they need to actually put a lot of money because you can scale up there are scaling systems for these. For example, if you have 10 or limited assets then normalizes that. They actually are worth barely anything. You can put that together and then you get a premium asset. You can scale up in terms of assets without necessarily having to compete against each other.

Stephan Livera:

Gotcha. And I presume that’d be like an in game store and things. How would that work? Like the user goes and buys the items from either from the store or from other players?

Carlos Roldan:

Exactly. Initially the store is, right now currently they in production. You can go there and buy assets. Currently what it is is basically it’s a linear economy store based on that quarterly usage and buying assets from us and they’re holding it. In the meantime we are financing the development of providing the marketplace for them to sell them and our company to provide, the tool to do that to making community trades. And then they can actually trade their assets there.

Stephan Livera:

So you mentioned how there’s the casual version that has no Bitcoin at stake and then you might have a version where there is Bitcoin at stake. Is that going to be also a kind of thing where it’s like people put Bitcoins or lightning sats at stake in the game itself other than the items?

Carlos Roldan:

Yeah. So initially we were thinking about doing that as a mission. So you go through the customer way and then there is, during this period of time, from this week to this week, you can play the bitcoin at stake mode and which is the casual mode, and it’s still competitive from the sense that you’re playing with branches of Satoshi, that you can either pick up or or lose. Yeah actually this mode that we’ve started doing and the development on the design thinking of this and basically your sats that you put up front, that’s actually your health bar. So basically when they’re killing you, they’re killing you, they’re like sucking your health. You have more seals so you have your, harder to kill and that’s, they actually game mechanics that we did for this specific mission from the casual mode.

Stephan Livera:

Got it. And so as you were mentioning, the single player version will be out relatively soon and then you’ll start with like progressively more and more. Have like a multiplayer and so on. When are you anticipating the final version ready for just mainstream use?

Carlos Roldan:

The mainstream one I would anticipate between first quarter, second quarter of 2021 and that’s where actually the kind of more fun to play the game. And this is interesting because right now the thing that we are releasing is not actually designed to be fun at all. It’s just designed to receive feedback to make the game fun. It’s just designed in the sense that we want to improve heavily on the game style, the game sound effects all of the game aspects because we already are heavy on the lightning integration and we already are prepared for what we want to do. However we want to again, maximize the gaming experience to make it a game. And not for bitcoiners or crypto community, actually is a game that for nocoiners, and traditional gamers to draw into bitcoin. And that’s actually what reason, that’s why we have to maximize the gaming experience.

Stephan Livera:

Yup. And as you were talking about the idea of getting people in who are not necessarily Bitcoin people, how are you envisioning that? Is it just basically on the strength of the game that you see people basically telling their friends? And also I guess one other component is, kids might want to play these games and then they can start getting used to using Bitcoin as well. So do you see that as an angle?

Carlos Roldan:

Yeah, I have to think that a game or this game can be come the next

[inaudible]

up for bitcoin mass adoption because of this. Because gamers they are, they have the perfect behavior consuming services in games that they already know how to do transactions. I mean they are already have balances in their game and they also have a store and they are committed to do transactions within the game. The only thing that drives switching between the bitcoin and that specific game without bitcoin is you’re also giving the option that as well as what you can do a transaction in and you can do a transaction out and then you don’t actually have to teach them that in order to go to a section out, they need to have a bitcoin wallet and they need to do all of the procedures, but they are used to this kind of behavior in the game. That’s where I think that, the switch has to be minimal in the sense of the user experience. So they don’t need to know what’s a Satoshi or what’s a channel. Nothing at all. They only need to see the numbers going out and going in the background, that’s where they tell you has to make all of their frictionless experience.

Stephan Livera:

Are there any apps that you are foreseeing people will use with Lightnite? I mean, are you thinking like, you know, Phoenix or Wallet of Satoshi or blue wallet or Breez or anything like that?

Carlos Roldan:

Yeah, I think when I get out, when I recommend a curated list of all major wallets that we think that is, they’re focused in on UX experience rather than privacy or security, which in my opinion I think should be the high standard. But currently we live in a, world where first they need to go from the UX in order to realize that you need privacy. But yeah, so we focus for UX based wallets like Zap, Blue wallet.

Stephan Livera:

Awesome. And then I guess getting more into the technical aspects of it. I presume you’re also going to look at things like LN URL for withdrawal and so on to make it fast. Of course, of course.

Carlos Roldan:

Of course. That’s a must. But in the sense that it has to be technology implemented and the user doesn’t have to have to notice, they need to know that it is part of the game. They don’t even have to know what’s LNURL. But of course in the technical side, we want to implement LNURL as well as any other type of implementation that they are going to result on a minimal friction for the game.

Stephan Livera:

Right. And I guess so obviously this, my show is more for the Bitcoin and lightning enthusiast so we can go a little bit more into that stuff as well. Tell us a little bit more about your thoughts in terms of which lightning implementation you’re using and any other, Bitcoin and lightning specific things that you’re looking at.

Carlos Roldan:

Sure. Yeah. Currently we are just using LND and due to their modular flexibility of useing authenticated macaroons, is my first priority. I mean, I like the way it’s designed. I’m actually interacting with the community and that’s why I am choosing that as well because it’s very easy for me since that’s where most of my experience has been since the beginning of Satoshi’s games, I’ve been using LND and that’s why we are using LND.

Stephan Livera:

Yup. And I presume then you will have like your own node and you can sorta tell people, Hey, set up a channel with me and stuff like that. Also are you looking forward to anything in terms of lightning development coming up? Is there anything that you’re really keen to see come into the protocol or come into the wallets?

Carlos Roldan:

Yeah, of course. I mean I’m very hyped and I’m looking closely to the next, the newest in. How to say, I’m really excited about the newest upgrades about the invoicing systems that they are doing different strategies to, you know, to have subscription invoices and push payments are also in my radar. So, those kinds of integrations, they are going to give us so many opportunities using creative ways to make more enhanced gaming experiences where we can maximize the game incentives, you know, to play. That’s what I am actually watching closely because I think that push payments and subscription invoices are very attractive and we can do many interactivity things without losing the game.

Stephan Livera:

So you mentioned subscription invoices, is that using a HODL invoice format or what does that, what would that be using?

Carlos Roldan:

Well, initially I not very well concerned about the way it is structured, in a HODL invoice. I don’t remember if it was introduced by Rusty, on the lightning conference when he was also mentioning about, this type of invoice, that there were for charity for donations.

Stephan Livera:

I see, if I recall correctly, and maybe Rusty can tell us if we got that wrong but, Rusty was talking about a more advanced form of ordering. And so I think in his mind he was looking at LNURL and saying, Hey, why don’t we get something like that a little bit more like that at the protocol level and have more advanced ways of doing this ordering. Such that, you know, it can be done at a protocol level. And also as you mentioned LND, I think another interesting concept might be TLV. Right? So, you might’ve seen recently a Joost and Guggero I think Oliver is his first name and Desiree Dickerson from Lightning Labs have recently set up. And I think it’s kind of like a proof of concept. It’s a TLV store where literally you copy paste the command with and that command actually has your, some other information encrypted into it as well, like the address to ship the stickers to. So that’s another idea as well that, potentially going forward, you know, it depends if you were going to do you know, have, the address or have like stickers sent out to the users or the customers, then maybe that’s like another idea as well. Do you have any thoughts on that kind of idea?

Carlos Roldan:

Yeah, I think that’s interesting as well. But then I would need to explore more in deep, the technological aspect of it in order to not to explore about how this can impact to the game experience.

Stephan Livera:

Of course.

Carlos Roldan:

But I just want, I know another, adding another point to this topic, something that I’m also watching very closely as well and I’m trying to see more and more updates and news about this lightning integration is running a lightning network within a liquid network. That is something that we have heard and I’ve seen test and results, but it’s still pretty early and I’m actually very excited to see how this is coming along and if this brings us more flexibility about using this in order for, creating assets more interactive on Liquid.

Stephan Livera:

Oh, I see. Yeah. So as I understand, I know I think Christian Decker was doing some work around making c-lightning work with liquid. And and I presume as well you mentioned Liquid. Liquid has this concept of tokenized assets. And so the most well known obviously is L-BTC, which is like the liquid version of Bitcoin. But obviously you can also create other forms of assets and they could represent potentially game items and then people might be able to potentially trade those around on the liquid network using Blockstream Green or some other software. Right?

Carlos Roldan:

Yeah, that’s correct. That’s correct. So that should be interesting. It’s such a really interesting because for games they may have a plus on that, but it’s also that I’m not very, I mean it’s interesting because at the beginning did they, you said that they will claim that in our case for our example in Lightnite, how many claims about where are going to be those skins in the store and we actually now are looking for any integration that we are actually doing at the moment where we are actually playing with Liquid. It’s interesting because I mean it makes sense I would appraise it that all of the users demand this feature, but they don’t see that this is going to be a critical feature. I mean it is now because our short term community and users are Bitcoin users. That they are, they are privacy, sensible which is how everyone should be.

Carlos Roldan:

However, my actual target, which are gamers, no corners. Again, [inaudible] I think if it did occur, it didn’t really care at all about in that assets history database or not because they don’t even care about making profits or making subtleties out of the game. They just be a game and they don’t know that they halfway pursued it. This is a hard way to actually educate them in the sense that they are interacting with value where they can actually obtain some value. That’s what I mean, I’m really optimistic about implementing a system like this, however, it’s not going to be a high priority. Even though like right now there is a demand because my most amount of users, they are privacy sensible, I am also privacy oriented too. But I see that, that most of the users, will care more about the gaming experiences because they are true gamers other than the privacy, is truth to about the skins in the game. And that’s interesting as well.

Stephan Livera:

Of course, of course, I wouldn’t yeah, definitely keep it simple is the right approach on this kind of thing. And although, you know you and me and listeners of the show might be really interested in the technical aspects of Oh could we have lightning and liquid and so on. Definitely you’ve got to consider your actual market and your actual market here and is gamers, gamers don’t necessarily care about, that, idea. Maybe they will in the future. You have to build for the short to medium term, not necessarily for getting the aspect of bringing them in. Another interesting area I was interested to discuss with you is around community, right? So community maps, community plugins, community, et cetera. What’s your plan around that and having, say community developed maps and whatever else.

Carlos Roldan:

Yeah. We actually want to follow this open development strategy, creating mods for other users, designers and game developers where they can integrate ideas until it’s not an open source development, but it’s an open software development where we bring these tools to do that. Yeah, they can actually be part of the map developers. They can create things. They might design Easter eggs, integrate the easter eggs in the community integrated list where other users can vote if that’s a good easter egg or that’s a bad easter egg and they’re voting each other’s work on ideas or proposals. And then the most voted proposals for game design or for style or for music effects. They can vote everything and then those gets implemented in a, democratic way.

Carlos Roldan:

Not only that, we also want to maximize the role of designers. So in the sense that let’s say you buy a scheme right now, all of the skins are being purchased from us, from our designers. This is something good, so we can start at the beginning and we can do some metrics and that’s cool. But we want to actually delegate this task on our community market, the community group of designers where they actually can do designs add them to their store people, vote on them. They most, voted and implement it. And now that when they’re buying a scheme from our store to any user or to or to us or to whoever that this the second have a commission out of this trade and, and this also incentivize a competition. Within these developers or designers because now they’re going to be focused on the community demand. So they’re going to be supplying designs and skins that definitely communities, no matter if currently what the high demand is bitcoin designs or they are going to be, I don’t know, shiny topics, things like you know, things that may maybe interested in that specific period of time.

Stephan Livera:

Yup. And I saw recently you showed you have a TFTC Tales From The Crypt skin gun. Tell us about that. And how that came about.

Carlos Roldan:

Yeah. That’s actually how it all started. That’s why actually make it do to be here. Actually it goes, we met with Matt Odell, which is actually one of the first guys that made possible with this lightnite game because then I remember being in Riga in this conference and he actually suggested to why don’t you do like a Battle Royale that’s going to be awesome. So he occasionally put the seed on that, so then he’s actually been so supportiveup to the point where we actually do things to get more solid. And then we started to invent this skin system where we started to do some collaborations with both podcasters, wallets and so on. Then there we decided to get a skin with him. So we started to propose some ideas and then he proposed the final skin to be this style, style of gun.

Carlos Roldan:

And it was kind of nice. I really liked it, the gun. Then we put it there and people decided to love it. And then people started to do, Hey, I want more of this. I want, I’m following this guy and I want to have this skin of this guy. So this started to create a high demand because of the social aspect of their skin more than attractive, or they’re based on design. So people started to request skins from many guys and many and many entities, and they would have to too high. So many demand for that, actually kind of make us the work so much. But, it’s beautiful because people love it. And I would love that, the people likes it. So, so it’s very interesting.

Stephan Livera:

Right. Yeah. And it might be funny, because I guess during the initial periods they might have, okay, some, you know, a podcaster, a themed gun or whatever. But then as you go to the more mainstream audience, they’re not going to understand that. Right? Like, they’re not necessarily going to be listeners of, you know, Tales From The Crypt or my podcast or whatever. But it’ll just be funny to say that happen.

Carlos Roldan:

Yeah, I think it would be like an interesting footstep. Like that easter. People make, some of them don’t understand it, but the people that understand it, they’re worth understand because they were there from the beginning. So, that’s actually the effect that I like about that. That we actually, we have a new skin here that that is for, for this podcast too. So we actually call it infinityvera. So it’s going to be like a melee weapon where you can actually, it has a combination of both. It’s like a super, I mean I would send the link so you can share it, but it’s a melee and at the same time like a gun with range. Like a virtual reality sword that is also a pistol at the same time.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah, that sounds really cool man. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing that when I play the game. So is there anything else you wanted to talk about? We could also talk about wishlist for Bitcoin and lightning. some people might think, okay, well look, there’s all this development coming and so on. But even now, lightning works today, right? You can use it right now. So is there anything that you think, you know, is needed at a protocol level or do you basically think we’ve basically got what we need to to make this game happen?

Carlos Roldan:

I feel right now we have what we need to make this thing happen. What we need this time to actually put all of this, all of this mess together and make it like, a beautiful gaming experience. I think probably there are more things that we need in the non-bitcoin stuff that are the weaker stuff because, we’re seeing we’re stronger in Bitcoin. We still have a strong point, in the game development. However, implementing a Bitcoin integration within our game in our case is way more easy. Than implementing, well a beautiful game requires a huge amount of time and resources. And that’s why I don’t know for my class, thousand of thousands of guys working eight hours per day and we are still a startup. We are making this happen from a different point of strength because we are good at the game development and we are good at the bitcoin integration but now the game development is way heavier than the bitcoin integration and currently what we need from the Bitcoin or Lennon stuff is do a critical of the internal economy of the game, which we can really start implementing that very easily. And since we are running our own nodes, we have our own internal infrastructure. It’s not something, that we need to request more from the protocol or stuff. But at the same time, I’m very happy to see what the newest updates about different types of invoicing systems or architecture or different things that they can actually bring more creativity options to implement lightning in the game.

Stephan Livera:

Fantastic. So tell us where we’re going from here. Where do you see it going? Do you see it? Like the typical customer might be a kid and then that kid might have their first exposure to Bitcoin and Lightning by playing the game.

Carlos Roldan:

Yeah. Yeah. That something, that I think is gonna be first. One of the most fulfilling things about this product in my, in my personal opinion. And secondly, this is something that is already happening. I mean, I received direct messages from dad, you know, from parents that they are saying, Hey my kid is so addicted to Fortnite, and I want to bring these games so he can actually make money out of it. And when this happens, I mean I am so satisfied that sometimes I get even, I give them access for free. I want to keep incentivizing this behaviour, of young adopters kids, like they’re like very, very young people playing this game because they’re eager to interact with this technology and make it easier so that any other guy. So I see that the potential, there’s a potential with this group of people, especially because we are designing the game with a very cartoonish design which is you know, is oriented for kids and in the sense that kids will understand it and that’s why we are using this kind of design.

Carlos Roldan:

And yeah, so that’s basically one of the behaviors that we are spreading. We had something similar with Satoshi’s games, there were so many dads that they were bringing the kids to play the games and just because some of the games they were from a video time that Super Mario and they see that that is the same game as always, but with the technology they love. So it’s like something that feel like very, very satisfied and they bring their kids to play.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah, that’ll be really cool to see. And I think it is true when we’re talking about social change in general. Oftentimes it happens just from change of generations right? And because Bitcoin has been around, especially for kids, it’s basically been around for their whole lives. By the time, the games kind of come out and so on, that’s a good angle for people to have some exposure to Bitcoin to the non hardcore Bitcoin audience as maybe you and are. So look, Carlos is there anything else you wanted to mention? Any parting thoughts for the listeners?

Carlos Roldan:

I think this has been a good conversation. But yeah, the thing is like what I mentioned before about the skin. So for all of your audience, they have their skin, the gun graviton and if they buy the game, using that link, it gives them for free the skin, and it also gives them a 20% discount if they don’t go through it a link like this they cannot obtain. So that’s a gift for your audience.

Stephan Livera:

Fantastic. Well, thank you. And Carlos, make sure you let the listeners know where they can find you.

Carlos Roldan:

Sure. And they can find me on twitter, @whiteyhat there and they can follow @Satoshisgames. The actual game the lightnite product is Lightnite game. Yeah, that’s where everyone can find it.

Stephan Livera:

Fantastic. Thank you for joining me, Carlos.

Carlos Roldan:

Thank you it’s been a pleasure Stephan.