Podcast 147: Star Atlas Weekly Review

Podcast Transcript

Hi. This is Matt with the Intergalactic Herald. Welcome to my Star Atlas Week in Review podcast. This is podcast number a hundred and forty seven. Any articles or videos mentioned can be found on my website at intergalactic herald dot com.
Just look for a weekly recap newsletter, a hundred and ninety five. So just a quick summary of things that happened this past week in Star Atlas. there was the Atlas Brew that occurred on Wednesday where they talked about the open market operations…
Yeah. That was the main topic. Zinc, the origin season was actually announced to go live after the alpha just ended, and that’s gonna start on December sixteenth. And then there was a interesting post or reply, I should say, in the foundation room from Danny, the chief…
product officer, yeah, CPO, that I thought I would go over a little bit today because, again, it continues to kinda give some mindset from the different founders. So, anyways, yeah, that was pretty much it this past week in Star Atlas. again, just, some of my projects are ready to Star Atlas. Please do check out my website intergalactic herald dot com. has a great resources for many things about Star Atlas including, beginners guides, directories of things like guilds and content creators and tools.
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So So getting into the things again that happened this past week in Staros. As I mentioned, the main one was the Atlas Brew, which, again, pretty much talked about this new concept they put out, I guess it was the at the econ form called the open market operations. So I’ll refer you back to that.
StarOS TV has the full…
recording of that. Again, you can listen to the star or my AI recap, it’s on this podcast feed. But basically, in summary, and that’s pretty much what the community team went over, just kind of did a summary of this. It’s also the last Atlas brew of the year, so it kind of made sense just to recap the latest news. So basically, again, it’s the idea that the Stardust team now is gonna start selling from their inventory.
So instead of just having it sit there in the marketplace at the origination price, initial price, they will look to sell those ships at a lower price. They only sell them for USDC, and again this is the idea of being a revenue generator. So apparently at the higher prices, as the team mentioned at…
the LS Brew, those prices were set, well, in a different time with a different…you know, market with both crypto and the world and everything. So this gives them a chance to actually sell at a lower price, and, again, trying to generate some, cash to come into the business. but, one of the things they also mentioned, now it’s come up, I think, twice, and I, again, still don’t understand the exact thing, but that they would actually also buy your Ships. But I think that was gonna be bought in Atlas.
So I’m not again exactly sure the pro or con of that other than, of course, if you have a ship and you wanna sell it, I mean, you can get some Atlas, but then what are you gonna do with the Atlas? So, but, I mean, like, I guess. but they also mentioned they’re gonna, quote, burn the ship. So I guess that reduces inventory. And, again, this might get into the kind of the economic theory.
I just don’t understand that if there’s less ships, is that gonna cause them to go up in price? So I don’t know. A lot of this, again, I think it’ll just be,
at least from my perspective, just wait and see what actually happens. One thing they did mention, the Atlas Brew, the, buy sale Discord channel that used to exist is coming back. So this is, what they call was OTC over the counter trading. again, it was existed, and then it was removed from the official Stryos Discord, but I’ve heard it people are still doing it in other places. But they mentioned their, part of this is because they’re gonna start pausing the, marketplace fees.
And one of the reasons, I guess people wanted to go off of the Star House marketplace to show…sell ships and buy ships was that there was a six percent I think it was six percent, transaction fee which went to the team. so again, if you do it person to person you’re saving that fee if you’re the…seller? Can’t remember. Somebody does it so kind of like how when you buy and sell a house there’s some fees involved and not both parties pay them. So anyways apparently,
they’re gonna bring that back because then everybody’s at an equal place. So, but again, if the marketplace has no fees, why wouldn’t you just do it there and have the escrow part come into play, which I think is the motivation why the team’s doing it. So, but they did reiterate at the Atlas Brew that the main reason for this open market operations is that, the goal is to stop having the team having to sell tokens to fund basically the game development. So if people start buying ships and…getting funds that way, then that’s where it works. So, yeah.
Anyway, so that was that. I think on Thursday, I don’t remember sure. maybe it was Wednesday. I can’t remember. the, there was a tweet on, I don’t know.
Actually, was it a tweet? I don’t know. I saw it in Discord, but I guess it was a link back to it, a tweet on x Twitter, that said the Zinc origin season will be starting on December sixteenth, which,
is Tuesday next week for my time. so, anyways, that’s really interesting because…
the alpha season ended, I think, on Tuesday, and I thought they said there was a two week between, but maybe they were able to move it up. So anyway, so yeah, we’ll see where that goes from there. And then the last item I was gonna bring up was a post or reply in the foundation room from, Danny, one of the cofounders. But I’m gonna kinda not read it now. I’ll read it kinda my thoughts on the state of Star Atlas and kinda do a commentary as we go.
So, anyway, so, yeah, that’s pretty much the main things that least caught my interest this past week in Star Atlas. move on to my next segment where I kinda talk about the state of Star Atlas this past week. but again, I’ll get to the Foundation comment kind of at the end. But, yeah, I do think this open market operations now that it’s been a good week since the Econ economic forum and now,
kind of again…getting a refresher at the Atlas Brew. so, again, it sounds interesting. I mean, if the team can sell ships and make money, I mean, that was always the point of having the marketplace. I mean, if we’re being truly honest, I mean, they’re just selling made up things. I mean, that’s it’s a virtual item.
There’s no actual spaceship, but again, we never knew we were never buying a physical thing. Again, this goes back to other games and why the ideas of the blockchain gives you the ability to actually own your objects within a game. But in the end, they’re all virtual items, you know. The, you know, before they’re called NFTs, I mean, you know, there were items people wanted in a game, and they were willing to do things in the terms of service, allowed you not to do that. Well, this was being upfront about it.
So, yeah, I mean, I think the revenue goal was always to sell ships. So the idea, again, in a sense, I’m starting to think that it’s just basically a repricing or, in this case, a dynamic pricing because…
there is no set thing. Yeah. Sure. Life’s different than when they launched the original marketplace and the original ships and things like that. So, yeah, I mean, I think this all makes sense.
one thing, and I don’t know if it was intended, but I definitely kind of picked up on when someone asked if there will be some official…documentation on how this all will work. They said, oh, yeah, of course. Yeah. We’ll do that before we announce it, but we’re not, you know, doing it right away. And I don’t know if that’s, again, just a week later, but I sure thought at the con form they said in December.
But, again, they totally could have misheard or they changed their minds. So, oh, fine. But, yeah, it just doesn’t feel like something that’s coming anytime soon just also because of the manualness of, pricing the ships and which ships are available and things like that. That doesn’t sound like any sort of automation. It wasn’t like they were gonna take every well, from what I gathered the Atlas crew, they’re not gonna take every single ship and just knock it off ninety percent prices or something like that.
So,
this seems more like a…
planned, guided, thing. So, yeah, so, just more to sound like something’s coming anytime soon or at least before the end of the year. So and then but, really, in the end, at least from to my perspective about this open market operation, it seems like the Miro main question is, will people just buy ships with USDC? It’s one thing, I mean, if you already had some Atlas or whatever…
or any other crypto coins. I guess it doesn’t matter where the crypto, but, converting wherever you have it, either putting new money into your crypto or coming from another source, converting that all to USDC to give to the team to buy the ship. like, again, I think it’ll just be are there people willing to do that? now, this…could, of course, come into play when someone wants to get involved with the Zinc airdrop, and one aspect of that is you gotta play the game and so you need to ship. So, again, there is definitely a synergy where these two things could go hand in hand.
So, again, I think we’ll just have to wait and see, there, and that might be enough, to, yeah, jump start this, process. So…
excuse me. Ready to the, Zynq launch next Tuesday. definitely seems, much more doable. I know I’ve been pretty much…
not feeling like it’s a really good idea to launch this stuff right before the holidays. But Tuesday is pretty long. And I also realized if truly they were gonna be originally said there was two weeks between them. They have been running this test for six weeks. So, I mean, I’m sure they got tons and tons of feedback and things there.
But I think the real thing that dawned on me why this is maybe not as risky as I thought initially is this, again, is not on Solana. They don’t have to deploy anything. This is literally their own blockchain. So I would…bet or I would have assumed that the alpha test is on the system, hardware, software, cloud, whatever. And, literally, they’re just making it live because…they’ve been testing it and…interacting with the Sage and Holosim and all that kind of stuff.
So, you know, maybe not all the connections will be live on the beginning with the holiday or maybe they all will be or it’s just based on what’s currently gone. So, again, I realized that this isn’t something now they gotta go from a test bed. this probably on the live system to begin with. So, yeah. So it definitely seems like something that’s,
makes sense to come out…
next…
Tuesday. However, just again, other than this tweet and then a couple Discord announcements, which were basically pointing back to the tweet, and if I remember correctly, it did have a video. I think I saw it. So, yeah, I’m recording this on Friday night and that came out earlier and Tuesday’s literally…
two business days away. doesn’t seem like a lot of a promotion but, I did also remember that there was a lot of talk of getting influencers on board for this. So it might be one of those things you don’t really hype it before it’s available. You wait till it’s literally, live, and then influencers can say, hey. Go here.
Check this out. And you literally can sign up at that moment. So, yeah, this could be one of those kinda not soft launches, but in the sense that there’s nothing to launch. You just make it live and then you have all these people who have their followers. Hey.
It’s exists. Go check it out. So, again, it may all align right there, though I do still hope there’s more documentation coming out on stuff. But, again, we’ll see. And, again, that’s community you could always step up to on that.
So anyway, so, yeah, we’ll see you on that. So,
they did mention the Atlas Brew, and it was announced, that the next Atlas Brew is being supplanted by a town hall, but no information was given on what it’s gonna be about. still feel like just based on past precedent, it’ll be definitely a recap of things that have occurred. so I’m I mean, they’ve done that every year right before Christmas, so that makes sense. but I am thinking now more and more that…maybe the temper expectations on the number of releases, partly because we now have a date for Zinc. So that’s definitely being released, and that would be a big thing or one of the biggest.
So how much other things do you wanna do? UE five still feels pretty, likely in my opinion, and partly because they’ve always released one right before the holidays the last two years. So it feels like, yeah, that would there. But now I’m kinda thinking that could be it. Haul sim seems way too…
yeah. Too many things to come out in again. They’ve stated they don’t wanna release it before it’s ready. So that one feels like, yeah, probably not a Haul sim. And, oh, and c four is not coming out, and even I kinda speculated last week that maybe the test would come out.
But, again, if it’s a test, why would you release it when you got these other things? so, again, I think maybe tamping down a little bit of how many things are coming out. But, again, if Zinc well, Zinc’s coming. They they’ve announced it on Tuesday. I mean, again, I guess, they can…
miss it. But, again, given, like I said, it’s probably on the block their actual blockchain. They’ve already tested for six weeks. it’s literally play the current stuff of Star Atlas that already exists. In fact, in that sense, you’re not gonna really change anything because you want people mined and then new things come out in the rest of the first quarter, and those are other places people can, get experience points.
So yeah. So, yeah, we’ll just see you on all that. So, anyway, so that’s kind of it. And then I wanna just end up with, this post that, Danny, the cofounder, put in the foundation room because I thought it was really good. And, again, as I typically do with these, I don’t ever write down the question, but only because, to me, it’s more of just looking at the answer and talking on that.
So, anyways, he,
I think the something about the question was, like, which releases are coming. He noted that one of the…first major oh, excuse me, mega releases they have identified was actually an alien big game hunting, and I totally forgot that was part of the road map. and he said, well, yeah. We’re still on track for that. But this is where I think, and more the interesting part to me anyways, is when he kind of went off from that into otherwise.
He and he said, however, as a crowdfunded game, there are unique challenges where the community needs content along the way. It’s impossible for us to say, just trust us and wait years for release. So to satisfy that demand, as we build functionality and features, we create a release around it to deliver content and receive feedback along the way. So I wanted to just kind of look at that reply because I think it’s really actually interesting. One is crowdfunded game and I guess it is whether this is a what is it?
Kickstarter or whatever. I kept thinking, you know, I was I came into Star Atlas after all the posters had sold, so I didn’t really even understand anything about that.
but in reality, I guess, that is just a different crowdfunding way. Instead of saying, hey. I’m gonna pledge this. If you reach it, then everybody chips in their money. They said, hey, we got these things for sale.
Again, there was the promise of ships and resources down the road. Yeah. No matter what the method, they’re both crowdfunding. So, again, I thought that was actually kind of a really, interesting thing. And then, of course, the idea that because it’s crowdfunded, basically, you can’t get these mega releases and just work in secret and not build in public.
You have to be showing stuff. But again, really focusing on building functionality and then releasing that functionality. And then he actually had a numbered list of things and so, I’ll just read that. It was Character Movement, Showroom, summoning SFT ships, showroom, hover and flight mode, ground and air racing, ship combat racing, weapons, arena shooter, planet tech, gay gal galia, multiplayer, showroom, gunplay things, game pacing, galia. So, actually, I thought this was really insightful on how he showed it because we well, me, we, me, have only thought of it as the products UE5,
Sage, and things like that. So but what’s interesting again is pretty much all of this is UE five. This has nothing to talk about the economy or anything. And again, I’m not saying that they’re not all melded together because we saw from that product map a couple weeks ago that Danny produced. I mean, he knows where all the pieces fit together.
But, again, I was just really fascinated by this fact that these are all the UE five things. And but what was more interesting again, showroom, racing, shooter, first person, Galia, was what was on the first side of it is, hey, we showed character movement, we showed ships flying in, we showed hover mode, flight mode, ship combat, weapons, planet tech, multiplayer, game pacing. That’s all the product. I mean, yes, the result of that is, hey, I can have combat racing, or hey, I can see my ship, or hey, I can go play a shooter. But the arena shooter just means weapons are working.
That’s all it means, and weapons will be used in multiple aspects. So again, I’m really always,
really thankful. And again, if there’s any…
downside of having access to the team and seeing all kind of how all this stuff is made is when stuff like this is published and you really go, oh, now I see how the connection is. Because again, I’m sure every game studio is doing all of this, but, again, a game doesn’t come out for three to five years or whatever and then you know, it comes out and then they show it at a gaming conference and they’re gonna release the next fall for the holiday season or something like that. But all this stuff has been done years in advance, just you never knew it existed. So anyways, yeah. So I think that was really great.
And then he continued, and what was interesting was the references to Star Citizen, which has always been kinda compared to Star Atlas. So I’ll just read that. It says, as far as Star Citizen, the only thing I’ve referenced in relation to Star Atlas is that there are magical moments buried in Star Citizen that are difficult to access due to setup and engagement time. My goal has always been to find those moments to make them accessible to more types of players. It’s a similar endeavor where good Marvel movies start coming out and now a mainstream audience could see why so many comic book nerds love the stories and action them or how GTA is not a car sim, but it makes a bunch of types of realistic looking vehicles fun to play with.
So I intend to make those awesome things about,
SC, Star Citizen accessible even on a gamepad. I’d say I’m basically aligned with it, and I thought I always made that stuff clear. It’s just a matter of time until these things are viable, and they do take time and crowdfunding games create a unique challenge that gamers aren’t used to in getting access to. Also, we don’t even know even need to have a login or wall. We can just have a play button in the wall.
It appears in the background. And those who want to continue playing, earning, or move their account, then they would understand what the process is. That that’s already intended. Nothing has changed since the start. Just adaptations to new demands from the community market or otherwise.
So, again, without the question, I know some of this doesn’t make sense, but again, it’s fine. Because I was really wanting to take away again…that again, the point is this is a crowdfunded game, there are unique challenges because the gamers aren’t used to having access at this point to developing the mechanics and things like that.
and again, whether it’s crypto wallet or just hit play and then you get the wallet later, it sounds like, again, all of these things are part of this game design. This has been from the foundation. They have all of this stuff in their mind, and we only get even with the crowdfunded, we only get to see these little things like, hey, the ship can fly. So again, I found this again incredibly insightful, so appreciative that they’re spending the time to comment when people post in there. again, I wouldn’t expect them to post every or answer every question or whatever.
it’s when things obviously resonate with different team members who do wanna post. But, again, I think it really puts a lot of this in perspective and really helps to understand there is a vision, there is a plan, they’re developing something, and we’re just seeing how that stuff is made. So, anyways, I found that really cool.
you wanna go look at the question, the foundation room is public now anyway, so you can go check that out. So, anyways, yeah, so that just kinda wraps up my thoughts on kind of the star state of Star Atlas this past week. Last thing again, just go to my journey playing StarOS. I haven’t. The, zinc alpha season finished up.
website kinda went down, and I realized you just clicked the button and it was back. But again, nothing’s accruing or anything like that. So, yeah, we’ll see. kind of, I don’t know. I’m very intrigued, for next week.
Obviously, the town hall, I think, will be great for information sharing. again, ZYNC, the next season launches. Be very curious to see how that goes…
Yeah. I guess I’ll probably I don’t know. Still, like, again, if I play now, I lose all the Solana fees. So I don’t know. we’ll just see.
but to be honest, now that I’m thinking out loud, question is whether or not I was spending time on this on winter break. And given kind of the slowness of stopping playing for months now, it just feels like something that just let it be during winter break and…
pick it up when it goes. I definitely can, I guess I assume I will still have the check ins on Zynq? I guess we’ll see. I don’t I think the check-in still is the main thing, plus the plane and stuff. Oh, the one thing that, did pop up…never mind.
I don’t remember I read that, so I better not say that. Sorry. Oh, no. It’s gotta be public knowledge. Yeah.
Yeah. Sorry. in the Zinc interface, looks like claim stakes reappear or appeared for the first time. So, yeah, I’m kinda excited about that because I have some claim stakes, so another pass away. So, yeah.
So we’ll see, how that works out. So, anyways, yeah, thanks for listening, to my thoughts on Star Atlas for the past week. again, if you’re interested in being on this podcast, love to have some guests. So please go to intergalactic harrow dot com, look for my contact page, or you can reach out to me on Discord.
while you’re on my website, intergalactic harrow dot com, please do check out the guides, directories, recaps, the Discord news feed. if you wanna star Alice Mugg and you’re in the United States, please check out intergalactic gear dot com. And if you’re a gamer, wanna hang out with other gamers, love to get a group together, set up a community for that at intergalactic coalition dot com. And that, this is Matt with Intergalactic Carol. That was your, Star Atlas week in review.
Have a great week ahead.