Podcast 162: Star Atlas Weekly Review

Podcast Transcript

This is Matt with the Intergalactic Herald. Welcome to my Star Atlas Week in Review podcast. This is podcast number one hundred and sixty two. Any articles or videos mentioned can be found on my website at intergalactic herald dot com. Just look for weekly recap newsletter two ten.
So So just a quick summary of things that happened this past week in Star Atlas. There was the, Atlas Brew put on by the community, team. Yeah. I’ll just keep calling it the community team. mainly about Holliston.
and that would that was pretty much it. So, however, I will kinda briefly talk about a post on Twitter that got some responses because related to Blockchain gaming. But before I get to those things, just wanna again mention things I’m working on Star Atlas. First, of course, is my website intergalactic carol dot com. It’s a great Star Atlas resource website with guides, directories, recaps, and a, Star Atlas Discord announcement news feed.
So again you can check all that out at intergalactic carol dot com. Also I have my Star Atlas merch store at intergalactic gear dot com. Not a lot of selection…
sorry, Star Atlas has been kinda stagnant, so I haven’t done any work on it. and then, would like to get together with other Star Atlas gamers who aren’t gonna be joining guilds, so you can check that out at intergalacticcoalition dot com. So…let’s go ahead and get into well, the one thing that main thing that happened this past week in Star Atlas five Star Atlas was the Atlas brew. It was another, Atlas Brew, pretty much, yeah, exclusively focused on Halsam. First part was going over the current chapter two updates, talking about different fixes, some upcoming marketing they’re gonna be doing, talk about an in app storefront to buy crew, and then a little bit back and forth, q and a with the community there in the Discord chat.
So and then they switched and started talking about the next season of chapter three of Holosim, mentioned things like scanning will be there, and then again kind of lots of input from the community and things like that. And I’ll totally admit I kind of started tuning out at that point. And again, it wasn’t,
that well, it’s late on a Friday night when I was listening to this and recording this podcast, so it’s…
been a long week for me. So, anyways, but if you want to listen to all the details, please check out the, YouTube channel, Star House TV. you can go through that. part of it is just that…
yeah, I’m just not as interested in Halsim…as, Yeah. It just hasn’t been something I’ve been getting into. However, if you are into Holosim, really great Atlas Brew, do check it out. So…
and then kind of moving forward, kind of thinking about, this past week and kind of the state of Star Atlas, what’s been going on. Yeah. I do think it’s, really great that they have been giving, constant updates on Haul sim both for now and talking about the future, so I think that’s really great. Definitely like to hear more about c four and…
zinc too, but only…selfishly because I guess that’s what I’m we’re interested in right now. So, but I understand, some of this could be affected by…
the recent staffing layoff. So that’s completely understandable. And, again, there was some…feedback a couple weeks back that Michael Wagner, the CEO, posted about kinda where things were working. So, you know, again, if they’re losing if they’ve lost staff, I mean, you know, can’t expect…
things to yeah. Timing. I mean, it’s all understandable. and, again, all sims, active, able to be played, definitely something you should focus on. But yeah.
Love to get…more or not more frequently, but just, you know, little tidbits here and there. But, again, I understand if they’re not doing it. So yeah. So, again, that’s pretty much it. But I did want to, kind of talk about one other topic that’s tangentially related to Star Atlas.
definitely got my Twitter feed, lots of posts because, again, people from Star Atlas was doing it. So if you want to check out the actual article that has the link to the original…tweet, you can check that out in my weekly recap newsletter. The…but to summarize, basically, it was,
again, not to get into too much details because, I’m not a hundred percent sure. it’s hard to tell sometimes. But, anyways, someone from the Solana Foundation posted basically…a phrase, strangely in response to a post from Meta, I. E. Facebook, getting out of their Metaverse thing.
And the quote was, Games will not return to the Blockchain. And the article who was quoting this, tweet was saying, well, the play to earn model has collapsed and gave examples like, Axie Infinity and other things. Actually, they didn’t get too much. But, anyway, so again, I’m kind…of stretching for content. But again, it is related to Star Atlas because, again, Solana is the blockchain Star Atlas decided to use, is using, plans to use in the future, obviously…
even though the Zynq blockchain is a, clone? Is that the right term? I’m not really sure. But anyways, it’s running on a Solana…virtual machine. I get it.
I’m already forgetting all the technical terms. But, so first thoughts on this…
there was a little comments from other people in the Solana Ecosystem Foundation and they…
then said it was satire and so I’m like, is meaning the first comment satire? I get it. Part of the problem is the person who posted was like the head of gaming at Solana, so again, I’m not even sure at the end if this was serious or not, but, we can look at the larger, ecosystem and gaming studios that we’re building on Solana have all many of them have…
stopped, failed bankruptcy, whatever you wanna call the term. So, you know, the number of games that were potential, is dwindling and…
I haven’t read I think it was at the new was it New Year? Yeah. It was New Year. I think I posted some articles that talked about all the gaming studios that all kinda went under at the same around the same time. So it was a pretty large contingency of that.
So, but again if we just kind of skip over the tweet and just talk about again…
gaming on the blockchain, let’s just call it that as the topic. So…
I still have thought, even though it’s been years later and again independent of how many games are on the blockchain, that the original premise of blockchain gaming had its positives. I mean the biggest one was again this concept of ownership of assets. And yeah, four, three, four years later, NFTs, I mean, you can argue, are they still a thing? Are they not a thing? they’re definitely not getting, talked about on…
general news media. people aren’t showing I…had remembered that what was it? one of the late night talk shows…
Jimmy Fallon owned one and brought out, what was it, a Bored Ape and, yeah, Bored Ape. Yeah. And then other people who owned them too, I mean, yeah, it’s not in that kind of public consciousness at all. But…
if you think of, blockchain as a part of the Internet…
Yeah. I’m gonna still call it the Internet. Without the Internet, there’s no blockchain. So yeah. So it’s an Internet technology.
I mean, we don’t even nobody cares about the actual Internet technology, TCP, IP, u UP, all those I mean, nobody, you know, HTTP. I mean those things no one talks about, but without them there is no Internet, hence everything built on top of it ecommerce and things like that. So, you know, Blockchain as a, Internet…
infrastructure, I mean…
perfectly fine. So, but I think the real key is this idea that two people through a trustless mechanism can exchange a digital…asset, I mean, yeah, if that was brought to gaming, it radically changes games because…
people are…
getting assets in their enclosed platforms of the gaming studio. So, yeah, I still think that is the fundamental positive of the concept of Blockchain gaming. But to me, I think maybe what…
confused the situation, because we definitely saw with NFTs, that it was they were art. they had value because people said they had value, but they didn’t have any intrinsic value or utility value. I mean those were the arguments made back in the day, of, you know, how other…parts of crypto are, you know, what’s the utility of it and things like that. So but I think to me, again, the focus that might have caused some of this…
lack…of sustainability was that, tokens…
And again, you could still make the argument that the primary tokens, Bitcoin and Ethereum and Solana and others have value because people say they have value. But then when you combine that with gaming and then you earn the tokens by playing games, again this play to earn, you know, there was about, well, you know, what’s your return on investment? What’s, the, yeah, return on investment? How much money can you get? And, I mean, it’s natural human tendency to wanna find the next cool thing and ride it, what is it, ride it to the moon.
But, that’s just not…gaming. Gaming is entertainment. it’s, interactive entertainment. it’s not financial. It’s not,
yeah. I mean, there’s no value in gaming. You do game…
I’m not sure if this is a good analogy, but it’s like reading a good book, it’s because you wanna read the book. Watching a good movie, you wanna watch the movie. You don’t think, well, if I watch this movie, I’m gonna make some money. I mean, again…
I get…
I’m just spending time talking. So it’s my podcast. Anyways, but again, this idea that, you know, focus on the tokens to get rich was a wrong concept. I don’t know. I mean I like the idea of value for sure that I can exchange ownership.
But, yeah, I don’t know. Anyways…
specifically to Star Atlas, I think to me, in hindsight, one of the problems of blockchain gaming is that…
it wasn’t their tokens that were the problem, but it was the fact that…
in order to run the Blockchain and the way the Blockchain is set up, you need to pay the validators of the transactions. So those were Solana fees, and the number of transactions to do gaming…
play…made the, affect the game way higher than anyone anticipated. I’m pretty sure that’s been stated by the…
the DAR ATLAS team that yeah. I mean, when they thought about it, initially, the fees were low, and they were fractions of…
Solana…coins…
You know, ten thousands of a fraction of a coin. Problem is when the coin gets to a hundred or two hundred dollars, that’s real money. And then you do multiple transactions for just one simple gaming step. And, yeah, it became an…
it just couldn’t play. even I’ve if you check out my videos, I mean, I had the idea, hey. You know, buy a game like traditional games for sixty bucks and pay twenty dollars a month for your, you know, monthly fee. that that’s hard to justify when even then you don’t get enough Solana for twenty bucks a month. Now, again, that…
prices have changed, so that’s may or may not still be, appropriate. But…
anyways yeah. So I think that did, affect Star Atlas. But, again, then they had the response. Well, hey. We’ll just build our old blockchain using Solana because of all its benefits, and then that price will be low, and that’ll overcome the problem.
And I’m definitely on board with that and hopeful that, again, that’s right around the corner. So…
but I think, again…
the biggest complication of…the idea of gaming on the Blockchain is it combines…gaming…entertainment pursuit with token appreciation, which is a financial pursuit. And if those things align, then everybody would be…awesome, but…they didn’t align. Star Atlas tokens in game tokens are…
are very low right now. So, you know, you and if you’re only playing for token appreciation, not fun, then, yeah, you know, it kinda does it there. So…I think…
and again, I’m just speaking broadly. I mean, to me, it seems like gamers…as a demographic are perfectly fine buying a game…
The…
new free to play, free to earn, freemium models. I mean, those were all came afterwards. Traditional. I mean, again, stated before, I’m old school or old time gamer, Whatever. I don’t even know what to call it.
But, you know, I mean, he bought a cartridge to put in my Atari twenty six hundred, and he bought cartridges to put in Nintendo’s and Sega’s and Playstations and Xboxes. No. Nobody had any problems with that, for decades. And then with the Internet and online, they came up with, you know, I always thought of it called DLC, but, you know, buying perks and stuff, and that became a totally different revenue stream, and then it allowed for you could play the game for free, but then you wanna do other things, you gotta buy stuff. So, you know, gamers are totally fine paying for things to play…
Crypto…
in addition to the things I’ve already mentioned, has another problem which is the onboarding complications. I mean, buying a game with your credit card is fine. Say I have to hard setting up a crypto wallet, maybe it should be a hardware wallet, signing transactions, and all this kind of stuff. And again, you can definitely debate whether or not Star Atlas and other gaming…Blockchain gaming…companies, you know, kept the Blockchain chain obvious, some hit it, and then you could do it. I mean, you know, you can definitely debate the pros and cons of that whole thing, but you I to me, I can’t deny that it adds another level of…
complication to it. So to kinda wrap this up, I guess, in my mind…gaming on the blockchain to me could definitely work. I mean, there’s absolutely…I mean and let’s give credit where credit’s due. Star OS has shown that. other game manufacture or other game development studios showed that too.
the problem is…it hasn’t been sustainable. None of them come up with a business model and a revenue stream to continue development. I mean, that that’s the problem. It games take a while. I mean, if you think about it, that’s, I think, one of the reasons mobile games, became so popular is they had a much smaller development cycle.
I mean, a classic quick triple a game could take years of development with complicated tools, and then you have to have a bat a massive, PC to run it…
or, again, develop a console game, you know, stuff to buy a console, things like that. But, you know, mobile game, build an app. they’re, you know, simple logics, things like that. So, but I think maybe the bigger thing on the game on blockchain is and whether this is…truly universal, I can really only say I have experienced Star Atlas, but…
I still think the one of the keys is the game has to be fun. and fun has to be defined as entertainment, not necessarily, you know, token appreciation or economy. But, again, to be on the blockchain and to have those things, you need an economy. I mean, I guess I get that. You know?
You can’t just…
and again, I never even thought about, you know, what model of mobile game could be turned into a crypto. But as I’ve been with Star Atlas monitoring and following it for years, I mean, there were times where, you know, the there was a mobile game talked about…
play I can’t remember what it was. It was exercise. What was the I don’t know what it was. But, again, you could have your crew member and you run and, like, levels them up and things like that. And so…play to move, I think.
Yeah. I mean, that seemed like a great idea, but there was problems with the implementation and, potential cheating by, you know, I don’t know, jiggling your phone a lot or something like that. So so that never went there. and, again, we’re seeing in the Hall of Sym, people are having fun. You know?
And but it has an underlying blockchain. You’re just not exposed to it. And, again, there’s different ways to look at all that. So I guess in the end, I think, is what was the phrase? Games will not return to the blockchain.
I don’t really buy that. I think with the right business model and the right…
revenue stream, I mean, games can be on anything. They can be on you know, we’ve seen that. There’s board games. There’s…console games. There’s PC games.
There’s mobile games. There’s, web games. I mean, gaming independent…gaming can be independent of whatever technology platform you want to do. The problem is was when the platform becomes the problem. And, again, if we tie this comment back into the metaverse…play by, meta…
you have to buy goggles. Again, at least they made them cheaper, but still, you know, playing on your phone, you already have it. Playing on your well, consoles are dedicated to gaming. But, you know, again, they were in a price point that was perfectly normal for someone to buy. And I’m dating myself, but, I mean, we’ve had consoles since nineteen…eighty, nineteen seventies.
I mean, this is going on fifty years. So, I mean, consoles as an object well, in computer gaming, it’s been around even longer. I mean, those platforms are solid. I mean, they’ve happened. So, you know, you can say a technology of blockchain isn’t inherently…
pro gaming or against gaming. It’s what you put on top of it. And, again, I go back to what I still feel is a strong reason is ownership. we’ve never had that before. Now is that because we’re not used to it?
And I think, again, there just hasn’t been that thing. So horse cart, chicken, egg, all that kind of stuff. So I guess to leave it, if it was my thought, again, to me, it’s any if you have a fun game, first and you put it on the blockchain with ownership of assets, I mean, it seems like something could work. Again, just because it’s a good idea doesn’t mean it’s implemented. So, you know, again, in Star Atlas’ case, long lead time, high Solana fees…
Yeah. And then they’ve said…
pretty that they I mean, the key is to get a product that people wanna play. So, yeah. I think yeah. Anyways so okay. That was my long winded…
thought Sona’s quote on Twitter. So anyways. So, final, segment, kinda just my journey point in Star Atlas. there was some, size Sly assistant, automation issues, which, fortunately, their…
the developers behind it, fixed it. So that’s great. But, yeah, I literally turned off my computer for a couple days because it just wouldn’t work. But, yeah, it was, I can’t remember what it was. It was…
our PC server blockage…
Yeah. I think that was it. Yeah. Sorry. Totally forgot.
but once I got back into it, I’ve been continuing with my normal process, which I’m currently mining Lumonite, again, with the idea of trying to craft a Mamba x. So, getting close to my, needed Lumenite number. So I’m restarting my transfer fleet so I can start transporting that back, trying to align that maybe those two get done, and then I can move on to the next resource. And then, shouldn’t…not forget to say, yeah. I’m still…
zinc…
What’s it called? The Zinky thing. what are we doing in zinc? We are earning…experience points by playing, but also doing the daily check ins. So, forget, I think, over a hundred days on that.
So, yeah, so continue to do that and, slowly, very slowly gain some experience or going up the rank chart and leveling up that thing. So, yeah, so, again, same old, at least as far as sage and, zinc. again, still hoping for updates on c four. but, again, all of them exist. definitely been…
following that through the Atlas Brew, not playing, but, again, products there, setting the stage for hopefully, did find it interesting. They mentioned they might actually start doing some marketing, so that’s kinda cool. So, yeah, that’s what I’m doing. So, yeah, just…a wrap up. thanks for listening.
Again, totally open. If anyone wants to be a guest on the podcast, please go to intergalactic carol dot com and go to the contact sheet, or you can reach out to me on Discord, same handle as my name. while you’re there, go to intergalactic carol dot com. You can check out my start list, guides, directories, recaps, my Discord news announcement feed. if you really wanna buy a Star Atlas mug in the United States, please check out intergalactic gear dot com.
And, again, wanna hang out on a different…
chat platform or communicate or community platform, I guess, is a better way to say it. definitely, it would be interesting getting together with other star us, gamers who wanna chat and do that. Check out Intergalactic Coalition for an interest survey. Other than that, this was the past week in Star Atlas. My name is Matt with Intergalactic Herald.
Have a great week ahead.