In this episode, we recap the latest news of Star Atlas from the past week.
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Podcast Transcript
[00:00:00] Hi, this is Matt with the Intergalactic Herald. Welcome to my start of this week in review podcast. This is podcast number 61. Any of the articles or videos mentioned can be found on my website at intergalacticherald. com. Please look for news recap 110. So a quick summary of things I’ll go over in this podcast.
[00:00:21] So first will be some of the reactions to the surge gameplay that occurred last Saturday, so a weekend ago. Also go over some I guess updates that occurred within the Stardust community. The biggest one that seemed to take up a lot of the time and conversation this last week is the acquisition of the Toks, I guess, brand or former company.
[00:00:46] Not actually sure, but anyways, so that pretty much filled up the rest. Just a quick update on some other things that occurred, like the Atlas brew, and then I’ll end up with both. Kind of what I’m doing currently right now for gameplay. And then just a thought on the kind of overall state of Star Atlas.
[00:01:02] But before getting into that, just a couple quick quick reminders on different things. One, if you’re interested in becoming a guest on this podcast, definitely looking to have guests that could be either to do kind of the weekend review, which I go through, we could definitely do an interview.
[00:01:15] So looking to talk to anyone in the community. content creators anybody doing build projects. And obviously any star us team members if they’d like to spend a little time chatting. So and then I do have two star projects I’m working on. One is my merch store, intergalactic gear. That’s at intergalactic gear.
[00:01:33] com. I’m. So close to being done, but I continue not to make progress at night and on the weekends. But again, lots of things going on on the business and family side. So it just hasn’t hasn’t been a priority. And then the second thing is I’m still working to try to develop my own community. I’ll call it a non guild guild called the Intergalactic Coalition.
[00:01:57] That’s at intergalacticcoalition. com. You can actually check that out. I do have an interest survey up there that you can sign up for. So, those are two of the things I’m working on. So, that’s it. Let’s go ahead and get into the bulk of the content lots of videos came out last weekend and Monday that were kind of live streams of the Surge event which I did actually play actually play with my son, so that was kind of cool we did the Saturday night session, which I was told had less people so I think we didn’t experience as many of the, the leggy gameplay and things like that.
[00:02:28] But kind of have to admit I missed out or I would have been cool to see the thousand players in the earlier one. But the aft the morning session for me just did not fit my family personal schedule for a Saturday morning. So, anyways, Beyond the Horizon did a live stream he had his son pop in at some point too.
[00:02:46] So that was kind of cool. But he was in a, at least the live stream he presented on his YouTube channel was the first one. So they got up to the thousand. He did mention it was a very, very laggy at certain points, but you could just tell from how he was playing and different things. He obviously was just having a ton of fun.
[00:03:01] So that was pretty cool. Metaverse Explorer also did a live stream. And he had many different issues. Now, interesting. I think he did the second session, the one that I was in. So he had a, a lot of loading times from the Epic Game Store. He had to lower his settings and it just kept crashing and it was actually loading him into an empty game.
[00:03:19] So it was great tech. Well, not great for him, but it was great to see a live stream. Cause I know he’s always wanted to do You know live stream and things like that. So but anyway, so those were two great ones. If you either weren’t able to participate or you want to kind of see a different perspective check those out again.
[00:03:33] They’re in my weekly newsletter. You can go to interact intergalactic herald. com for that. And the news recap is the one 10. So one of the things that definitely came out of this surge gameplay, which again, we shouldn’t. Say is the final product, the UE5 version, but definitely it seems like you need to have a pretty good computer and a video card to, you know, get everything to work.
[00:03:57] I’m sure that you can change settings and things like that. But overall, I have to say, I found the surge gameplay style actually very compelling. And I don’t know if again, just goes back to kind of when I was. Way younger and first person shooters and quake and I guess it was unreal tournament and things like that.
[00:04:14] I mean, I got all those vibes coming back. So, and I know that game play style has never left. It just, I moved on and got much more interested in RTS strategy games, but yeah, definitely a game that I’m interested in and having those aspects. So I do hope it will become a regular game play style.
[00:04:30] Cause I think it’s a great compliment to Sage in the sense of You know, it’s, it’s get in, get quick or get started quick, get into a game, have a little bit of fun and not have to worry about kind of all the, uh, economic things and logistics things and things like that. But on a, you know what do you call it?
[00:04:52] Prognostication? I think that’s the right word. Anyways it does sure seem, because again, as we were playing Sage and running around, you saw all the racetrack stuff in the distance and things like that. So I do wonder if maybe the focus will kind of shift back to the gameplay, or sorry, the racing component, which again, could still also be an interesting thing.
[00:05:11] But hopefully again, I could see, you know, especially if they did kind of smaller maps, lower player count, which again, I know they were trying to test how many plays you put in it. One instance with the metagravity technology, but again, it seemed quite, I mean, It was pretty polished and fun. I mean, even with the glitches that were had.
[00:05:32] So anyway, so again, I had a very positive experience. Really enjoyed seeing the Surge gameplay style and things like that. So as is typical Aphia Funcracker put out his newsletter on, I think I receive it usually sometime on Monday, maybe Tuesday. I’m not sure. Anyways. And he brought up and kind of the first time I had heard about it, this acquisition of the Toks brand or token or whatever, and I guess as I learned more that the Starla shared a Medium article on Saturday between the two shows partly because there was some reference to weed, cannabis.
[00:06:05] So 420 was a good time to release it. So I, I think I just wasn’t paying as much attention or I didn’t read the article or it doesn’t matter. But anyway, so he had a great initial take on that. And what was good is he was actually able to share some content from the foundation room, which is where a lot was coming out.
[00:06:22] So if you really wanted to kind of start at the beginning, you definitely read the medium article and then Apia’s newsletter, which Funcracker wrote, has a lot of it. Now, we’re going to get into more of this in this podcast, but this is the note I made to myself when I read it. It said, I just, I didn’t get it.
[00:06:38] And again well, anyways, I mean, start out, so, so the best understanding I have now, a week later, is that TOCS is a token rated a project that was going to help develop blockchain identification of cannabis related things. Michael Wagner, the CEO of Star Atlas was definitely involved with it.
[00:07:00] I’m still not clear who, potentially other team members. It I, again, I just, it was hard to follow everything and all the, the different things that came out. So I, I guess my initial take was I, you know, Star Atlas is owned by I always never say it right, but a time and they can do whatever they want.
[00:07:18] I don’t get the whole concept. Oh maybe this is, these are my responses to the information that was presented in fun crackers. If you had newsletter. So again, I just didn’t get it. I don’t get the dilution because, and I’ve been pretty up front many times on my podcast. I’m, I’m here to play video games.
[00:07:35] I get it. Kind of want to learn blockchain. It’s cool to own your own assets through NFTs. I’m not opposed to making money, but I consider this more of an entertainment pursuit rather than investment or whatever. I do plenty of that in my business and personal life, you know stocks and retirement accounts and owning a house and things like that that I’m I’m just not what I am.
[00:08:00] I know there’s a lot of other people that this is a very important part and things, so I’m not trying to take away from those things. It’s just not mine. And again, this is my podcast. And so you get to hear my thoughts. But what was interesting was this whole idea of these cultivation facilities that Flynn Cracker brought up in the newsletter.
[00:08:17] And I Hadn’t heard about that before, but I was also kind of like, well, how are these any different than the space stations, power plants, and other structures that have so far been released out there. So again, I, this was just my first in depth understanding of this whole acquisition. Event. So wasn’t really sure but moving on.
[00:08:39] But also to just comment on two other things that was in the APU newsletter. One was the first time I’d seen the sage or excuse me, the surge crew cards being listed. And again, since we met the thousand person goal, we were all going to get one. So that was pretty cool. And Buncracker wrote about a lot of the star base changes that were coming.
[00:08:57] And I. But since I haven’t really played it, I, it really didn’t make any sense to me at all. But as was later mentioned Funcracker or Aphea. Again, I’m never, I want to dismiss if other people within the guild are doing work, but they actually released a updated Starbase guide, which is on my reading list just didn’t make it into this one.
[00:09:18] So again, I appreciate that there are others within the Stardust community that are really on top of this thing and providing resources to the rest of the community. So it’s all really great. So a couple of days went by and then this Tok, Tok’s acquisition kind of really kept going. Going and so both Beyond the Horizon and Metaverse Explorer put out videos about it.
[00:09:37] So, again, referencing my News Recap 110, you can hear their two points. Beyond the Horizon, I think, did a great summary at the time of the video of all the information that was available. Metaverse Explorer, I think, might have come out a little bit later. I’m not 100 percent sure. But he basically was commenting on Michael Wagner’s response.
[00:09:57] So, that’s pretty much it. All I have to say on it the whole tokes thing. And again it’s not for lack of, I don’t think there’s a merit from both all the people that are commenting on it. And again, unfortunately, a lot of this comments are in the foundation room, so can’t talk about that. But those are some great resources if you don’t learn more about it from, from community members who are, you know, commenting to myself personally, and, And I’ll get into it a little when I get into the final topic here.
[00:10:29] I, I just, again, I’m still trying to find the time to get into Starbase. I found Surgery cool. Don’t know if we’re gonna get to play that more. Hey, another, Facility structure within Starlight School, you know, so again, it was kind of like all the oxygen got sucked out of the room this last week because of this, but I’m not really sure what it all is or means.
[00:10:51] Lots of very passionate comments on everything. And that’s all great. It, it just didn’t register for me. But again, that’s just me. So last little thing. There was an Atlas Brew this past week. A lot of community updates, but in particular, the Super Phoenix DAO, they did a presentation.
[00:11:10] Really great. I’m, again, excited about that. Personally, very, very interested in this. I think this is a great community effort. They’re developing a lot of cool things that they presented at the Atlas Brew. So I’ll be really curious to see again how that continues to develop. Cause it, it’s, it’s very intriguing.
[00:11:24] So, so the final two things I’ll go over one is just sort of where I’m at. Maybe I’ll make this a regular segment, you know, my personal gameplay has been So I think last weekend I was finally able to get some resources transferred into Starbase. So that was cool. And then I took one of my ships that had sort of been just hanging out there and moved it in and it worked.
[00:11:44] So again, I’m not sure if just Solana is behaving better or some of the bugs or the. processes the team was able to update. So but I just need more time to go any further. So again that’s sort of where the AFIA’s updated star base guide. I’m really looking forward to having that when I can find some time.
[00:12:01] And then personally, I’m still getting rewards and score. So I, I thought it was going to be turned off. I don’t think I’ve seen any official public announcements about that. So I’m continuing to do that to get my, again, I know reduced amount of score, but for, you know, a few minutes of time still. Might as well keep cooking, especially since up until just this last weekend, I wasn’t able to do any of the commands within Starbase, so.
[00:12:26] So then the final thing I just wanted to mention is kind of just stepping back. So again, as I’ve mentioned many times on this podcast, what I’m more looking at is not being a breaking news source not interested in kind of a journalist, you know, getting whatever. So again, you’re not going to see, well, I should say never, but I mean, I’m not interested in releasing a quick YouTube video about whatever just happened.
[00:12:47] I’m glad other people are doing it. I really appreciate they’re doing it. I find that. Where I’m looking, but I’m kind of like, Hey, what happened this last week? So actually I took kind of everything about what was going on and just step back and kind of was thinking in a big picture about the overall state of star Atlas, and it’s not that it was because of this, but it definitely made me kind of think, Hey, you know maybe what kind of context do I put all of this in there?
[00:13:13] So, so the first thought I had was again, what is the development teams goals or. Biases or whatever you want to call it. And again it’s become very clear to me, at least that the development team is trying to develop a product. They have a plan and we’ve seen that now on the roadmap. I mean, it is extensive.
[00:13:30] So they have a vision of where they want to, to move forward. So. They’re going to want to see their revision completed. And this could be years and we’ve always known it’s years, but again, I think it’s something maybe not spoken as much as that they, they, this is what they’re doing. They’ve not dedicated their lives to, but these are their jobs.
[00:13:51] I’m sure they’re enjoying their jobs. Partly to remember people still around didn’t get laid off when Star Atlas had to cut cut the staff. So, so these are definitely, I don’t want to say hardcore, but you know, I mean, they’re, they’re passionate. I’m sure they’re passionate. They, they show up in so many different ways to be passionate and they really believe in the thing they’re creating.
[00:14:13] And where does all this go? I have no idea. This doesn’t seem like any time they’re going to give up control until they’re done. So, I mean, when we talk all about, you know, DAOs and making changes and all that again, that’s great. It was all spoken. Here’s the goal, here’s the plan, but it sure feels like, again, the development team is really focused on finish or building things they want to build.
[00:14:38] The other thing that’s come up recently, again, is the concept of the and I guess I believe everybody in crypto knows what a whale is. I think I know what a whale is, but I’m not sure. But anyways, it’s the people that have a lot of money and they’ve really got invested into a specific thing, which means they have more stuff.
[00:14:58] And usually that stuff is because they had more money to invest. Great. So I think the, to me again, kind of this bigger picture, overall state of is just to remember that the whales do have a big factor. In many different things from gameplay to you know, rewards and things like that, because again, they have a monetary incentive.
[00:15:19] They’ve already invested a lot. They, they typically want a lot out and, and more power to them. But they are a minority. And by that, I mean, in pure. Numbers. They’re just, there just can’t be that again. They’re called whales for a reason. They’re big. There just can’t be a lot of big things because there’s only so many people that’s going to put X number dollars or whatever.
[00:15:43] And that, but the thing that I wanted to point out to me at least was this is the same way in real life. I mean, you got people that have lots of money, you got the billionaires. Well, there’s not a billion billionaires. There’s. Tens of, well, who knows what there is, but you know, my point is there’s seven, 8 billion people.
[00:16:01] There’s not that many billionaires. So there’s not going to be that many people in probably every system or community that you think of. And just like in real life, people with money haven’t used your time making money. This is just how it works. So it’s not that surprising that they, you know, the, The whales, per se, are demanding things or wanting things or, you know, that all makes sense.
[00:16:25] One thing about the Dow that has you know, it’s been talked about, well, if the Dow did this or the Dow did that. But I remember distinctly one of the interviews that Michael Wagner was on many months ago was mentioned again about the possibility that the Dow may not go. So In the sense that it could all be created, but it may never happen due to voter apathy.
[00:16:45] And what I took away from that is, sure, you could have a bunch of whales, the team itself, see how I’m tying all this together. And they have a large voting power because of their, their ass or their investment in those tokens that allow them to then have that. But again, if the development team has a lot and the whales have a lot, Again, unless they’re on the same page, they’re not going to move forward.
[00:17:12] So, but what I think Michael Wagner was mentioning when he had his interview was, if you look, step back and you look at everybody that has voting power, sure, maybe a whale is incentivized to make sure to vote and obviously the team is. But If you don’t have everybody vote, you don’t get the what is it called?
[00:17:32] Quorum. I mean, you, you can’t actually pass things. Everybody has to be involved, but, and I was just reminded of this. I was logging out of discord before coming over to record. This is there’s over 175, 000 discord members in the starless discord. I don’t think they’re all active. Again, I know the team has never shared discord statistics that I’m aware of, but at least.
[00:17:55] being a lurker and checking things out. Sure, Foundation Room doesn’t count because you have to be a smaller set, but the other channels aren’t massively popular and you see names cross over to both of those. So who are these 175, 000? Well, what if they all had voting power? And 1 percent votes. Well, can you actually get anything again?
[00:18:17] I’m making up hypotheticals that don’t exist. We don’t know how much, you know, I mean, maybe the Dow is controlled by 10 people. I don’t know, but I do remember again, when Michael Agner said it, it made me realize too, that. Really the DAO is about participation and people being involved. Again, you have to be a POLIS holder even to be in the DAO, so this may not all apply.
[00:18:37] But, given everything else, especially since he’s been involved, he’s a co founder, I’m putting a lot of stake in that phrase because to me it really registered. And then the final point on this overall state, and again it goes back to the search thing. So, I’ll be first to admit, And I didn’t mention on the podcast after the previous test had barely been able to crack a hundred or 200.
[00:19:02] I was actually kind of shocked that the thousand was reached quite easily. Now I know Star Atlas and I’m pretty sure Dominic the, one of the community managers mentioned on the Metaverse Nomad show on the Sunday after the surge that, you know, this was the first time they’ve kind of really tried to do some marketing, really promote on social media.
[00:19:20] They were given keys away like crazy within the Star Atlas discord. So. There, there was a lot to it. Now, just as a quick aside when I tried to get my son hooked up into it, it was weird how hard it was without a ledger wallet to create an, an a wallet to just get the key and all that stuff.
[00:19:38] The fact that within a thousand people did it, that was even more impressive because the onboarding was definitely not well communicated. But my point is really, I was shocked with a thousand. I really thought this was going to be a much lower number. So that’s great, but it’s still only a thousand and there were rewards and the crew cards and the things.
[00:20:03] So given that, I think the bulk of the community, like I said, there’s 175, 000 in the discord. The bulk of the community are not going to, well, they’re not the development team. They’re not whales. Maybe they care about. The Dow, but they’re potentially not going to have that much resources. And by resources, I mean, cold, hard cash to, to play under.
[00:20:25] So gamers, again, maybe I’m stereotyping, you know, 60 bucks for a game, maybe an extra skin here and there, you know, I don’t know, a couple hundred bucks, maybe a thousand, I don’t know, but you know, if you’re a gamer and you’re moving from game to game, that thousand dollars you put into one game means you got to stick around.
[00:20:44] So you’re there for the game and do you care about all the real life politics? Do you care that one of the businesses purchased another business? I mean it may register, it may not, I don’t know. But if the but if the game doesn’t provide what they’re looking for, whether that’s, again, entertainment bluntly if it is a play to earn option, then the I just, I don’t think Star Wars is ever going to be popular.
[00:21:13] Whales can do what they want, but they can’t bring more people in. And if the barrier to entry to do anything fun or slightly earn potential investment, whatever doesn’t work for them How does it be popular? And again, if it’s not popular, how will start lists ever have the network effect that it needs to be popular?
[00:21:32] Again, it’s the, it’s the, it’s the positive flywheel. You have to have people that get in early adopters that say, Oh, this is cool. And they tell their friends and their friends come to go, Oh, this is cool too. And it goes that way. If again, you can’t figure out how to get in or you get in and you can’t do whatever entertainment.
[00:21:49] earn money, whatever, then all, all the things for a Dow incentives to whales I guess even the development team, cause they need money to keep paying salaries and developing things. So again, I guess where I’m trying to say with all of this is, At the, to me, and again, I’m going to continue to say to me, and I’m biased because again, I’ve said, I’m a gamer, not an investor, not a whale, not whatever that the, the, the community has to want to play this game.
[00:22:20] And to me, the community is going to be gamers who want to come in and play and have fun and do all these things. If all of these very small minority super focused on their own objectives is the ecosystem we’re building. I don’t know where it’s going to go. Now, I’m not saying that the thing is doomed and nothing’s going to happen because again, score was, or excuse me, search was great.
[00:22:45] Starbase, Sage, it shows potential. And as Michael Wagner and I’ve said it now a couple of times, this is, what is it, pre, pre alpha, beta, I don’t know what, sorry, I can’t even remember the term cause it’s got four words in it. But You know, it’s pre release, pre alpha what what does Santi, Santi say, I mean, if you factor all those things in, yeah, the normal gamer isn’t going to be interested right now.
[00:23:12] They might show up for one thing, but you know, where are we going to get to it? And again, that’s what I think was really fascinating with the new updating of the roadmap. There is so much depth to what they’re presenting, what the team is talking about doing, that I could see so many gamers getting involved in any way.
[00:23:27] In small subsets of what’s going on. So again, kudos to the team for the vision, the, the idea of going forward. Are there crazy little things along the way that suck up a lot of oxygen and a lot of real life politics and all that stuff? Yeah, yeah. What about next week? What about the following week? That, that’s to me is what’s important.
[00:23:50] going forward. And again, maybe we’re in a slower point, but again, just talk about the crew cards, even if they’re delayed some, there’s, I mean, there’s all this kind of stuff. Sure. Solana is slow right now and things like that. But anyways, I guess to wrap this up to me, the overall state of star Atlas is still strong, but it’s going to be strong because of getting.
[00:24:14] Things that are interesting to the majority of what will eventually become the Stardust community, which again, I believe deposit are gamers. And when we get there, then sure, there can still be whales. There can still be the development team. There can be the DAO that helps steer that based on community sentiment and kind of crowdsourcing all that.
[00:24:34] That to me is still all of those things that are interesting, whether one company acquired another company. I mean, wouldn’t be shocked if this keeps happening. It just may not happen because one person’s involved with both things, who knows? So I’ll leave it at that. Partly because. That’s all I could write down.
[00:24:51] So so to wrap this up again if anybody would like to hang out with me on one of these and chat, love to definitely interested in interviewing content, starless content creators builders starless team members love to have a chat. If you’d like to be on the podcast again, I have two starless projects.
[00:25:07] I am slowly working on one is my merch store at intergalacticgear. com. Please go there. Fill out my merch survey. Love to get some feedback getting. Actually, you can go there and buy a mug, but it’s not finished yet. You’ll get it, but I hope to have more mugs and more graphics on the box anyways. And then I am trying to develop a community again, nothing wrong with the star as discord, but it serves its purpose, but really where people can hang out looking for more Threaded discussions not just chat want to come and go, get email alerts to topics you’re interested in, again, hang out as gamers, not necessarily guilds please go to intergalacticcoalition.
[00:25:46] com, fill out my interest survey, once I get enough interest there, we can move forward, it will be a paid community, because I gotta pay for the software, but I also think that’s positive for both community members and myself to help with offsetting the cost of all the things. So again, intergalacticcoalition.
[00:26:00] com. And that’s pretty much it. Thank you very much for listening. I guess I’m supposed to tell you like, and subscribe, and all those things, but you know, I don’t know. Got enough people already. I mean, people are growing that organically already. So anyways this is Matt with Intergalactic Herald. Have a great week ahead.
