Igor Plusa on Chilling in the Metaverse on Your Terms with Gamelounge.xyz (Episode 271)
Igor Plusa join us to discuss on chilling in the Metaverse in your own style with Gamelounge.xyz.
Igor Plusa is the founder of Game Lounge, the metaverse’s first realistic personal space simulator. Using realistic graphics and the NFT community, Game Lounge allows both gamers and first time metaverse user to build their own lounges/rooms, and to display their own NFT art!
Links:
https://twitter.com/GameLoungeXYZ
https://forms.gle/GZDXgvf9e4165Dyh7 – Bartender application form (the Lounge Ambassadors)
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The following transcript was created using artificial intelligence. There will be some grammatical errors below.
00:00:02:23 – 00:00:20:12
Richard Carthon: Hell, everyone, welcome to another episode of Crypto Current. Your host here Richard Carthon. And today I have a special guest all the way out in Poland working on a really cool metaverse play that also blends in a plethora of nfts to your own space. We have Igor with Game Lounge. How are you doing today?
00:00:22:02 – 00:00:34:17
Igor Plusa: Thank you, Richard. Hi. I’m doing great. Thank you for asking. Thank you for having me here today as a big hello to the audience that is going to listen to us.
00:00:35:10 – 00:00:44:22
Richard Carthon: Absolutely. Well, we’re excited to have you here. I’m looking forward to unpacking everything going on with Game Lounge. But before all of that, want to learn more about you can give us a little bit of background on yourself.
00:00:46:25 – 00:01:19:11
Igor Plusa: Sure. Yeah. I’m basically a guy with a few years, like many years already actually of expertise in marketing and sales in general. Beside that, a few years ago I moved into, into the crypto space first. Like a passive interest. Just learning the ropes, what’s going on and what is it’s all about. Then then moved to be a small time investor community builder.
00:01:20:05 – 00:01:33:00
Igor Plusa: Learning more along the way, I became an advisor for the project and yeah, at this point of time I’m a demo of the Cayman Islands, our very own project.
00:01:33:28 – 00:01:43:17
Richard Carthon: Oh, that’s excellent, man. So a lot of experience in marketing, just like you said, trying to bring things out to market. What was that first experience? Was that first introduction into the crypto space?
00:01:45:10 – 00:02:24:27
Igor Plusa: Uh, I was introduced to the crypto by my, my colleague Marty, who is the CEO of Game Lounge. So he’s the guy we’ve met a few years ago already. We’ve known each other for a few years and he was the guy who was always telling me about the crypto. This is happening, that it’s happening, man, this is awesome. And I was like, Just go away and leave me alone. I don’t want to care about this. But at the same time, I was I was learning some were coming around to when Ethereum was going up.
00:02:25:27 – 00:02:44:29
Igor Plusa: I did not invest Magadan in yet, but that was when I took interest in crypto in general. Unfortunately, I did not invest. Well, it happens all the time. And then slowly with the earth. I was over 30 after this point.
00:02:45:29 – 00:03:05:06
Richard Carthon: Got it. Well, you learn about the space, you start to pay more attention. Shouts CEO for like always nudging a little bit. Say like, Hey, man, you might want to check out this space. It might be something. And fast forward to now where you are, the CMO of Game Lounge. So explain to us what is Game Lounge and what are you trying to bring to the market?
00:03:06:10 – 00:03:17:18
Igor Plusa: Uh, sure. With pleasure. I’m actually the most excited person in the world about Game Lounge, so I will try to share the excitement here if I’m probably too much. Just something.
00:03:19:04 – 00:03:53:06
Igor Plusa: Basically, we started with Game Lounge as a group of colleagues. There is the five of us. We were all in crypto for a few years already. We knew each other in the real life, but it took us a few years for this whole gaming and metaverse type to start until we realize that we actually have combined a set of skills that allow us to actually start doing something on our own.
00:03:54:09 – 00:04:13:15
Igor Plusa: We have a few guys from the game industry and with our general excitement for for the whole metaverse stuff, we just started putting the whole team together and this is how we started, how it started then, why we were brainstorming what we can actually do.
00:04:15:01 – 00:04:30:14
Igor Plusa: You know, one point of my life, I used to be a gamer. I don’t really have much time for that right now, but I’m still playing some games. And all of my colleagues, they also use or who are gamers.
00:04:31:29 – 00:05:07:03
Igor Plusa: One of the bigger dreams for all gamers, I think, is to have this gaming cave, let’s say your room, to be designed to be filled with different stuff connected with the games that you play. And this is like a starting point for us, but it would be really cool to have such a place because in real life it’s for different reasons. It’s impossible to have such a room. I, for one, I couldn’t have such a room because I never had enough place or time to arrange it.
00:05:08:12 – 00:05:40:22
Igor Plusa: And now I’m doing that in the metaverse and this is something really cool. I just love moving the stuff around the lounge that I’m building. I’m sitting here with all different stuff because that’s basically what it’s all about. You as a user are going to create your very own personal space in the metaverse. So it will be like your house or your starting point for all your adventures in the metaverse.
00:05:42:03 – 00:06:20:23
Richard Carthon: Got it. So you have this area where you are able to be in the metaverse. It’s a metaverse play and you are creating a lounge for your different types of environments. So looking at the website right now and it’s really cool, so you have different areas we can kind of make it feel like old, medieval, like Western, you can have it feel like an arcade room. There’s a lot of different ways you can kind of put your own spin and taste on it. So can you kind of tell us like what the vision is for people to be able to communicate? It’s kind of, like you said, not necessarily physically being able to go and create and make the aesthetics that you want for your gaming lounge.
00:06:20:25 – 00:06:24:12
Richard Carthon: But now you can basically go into this metaverse game lounge and create this.
00:06:26:03 – 00:06:56:09
Igor Plusa: Yes, exactly. That’s how it’s going to work. First, you are going to you must get your own lounge. Its lounge is going to be amnesty. So why don’t you get your hands on the lounge entity which will come with one preset style of the room you will be able to choose between like sci fi fiction style, retro style and the medieval room style.
00:06:56:23 – 00:07:27:08
Igor Plusa: You will be able to pick one. You will be also able to pick the side that you want for starting from the smallest, the basic one. After the bigger, the gaming house is, of course, different priority and different basis for meeting. And that’s why you can find all the specifics on our medium article. Uh, but once you get those, one of those and a few lounges there that at the moment when the fun begins, you can start inviting your friend.
00:07:28:19 – 00:08:03:00
Igor Plusa: You can start designing the lounge the way you use it. You can move every basically anything in the lounge. Everything in the lounge is customizable so that you can not only move it around, but you can also change each furniture, piece, accessory, etc. We are creating the first set of items that are going to be available in the lounge. Each specific item is also an NFT, so that to make all this adjustment, it will be you will have to get the specific NFT interest you.
00:08:04:02 – 00:08:25:16
Igor Plusa: But then after some time we want to actually handle this part to the community. So this becomes really decentralized and we are going to do this through our decentralized assets marketplace and we call it. And then if you have the graphics skills,
00:08:27:01 – 00:08:39:07
Igor Plusa: you know how to do the graphic design of specific items. You can just create your own stuff for the lounge minted and start selling it on the on the marketplace.
00:08:40:23 – 00:08:43:25
Igor Plusa: Thus like and reaching the
00:08:45:28 – 00:09:00:29
Igor Plusa: the number of available items for the lounge. Of course we will be also introducing all the time new items, but we will focus on those unique ones that we will be creating in cooperation with different projects and influencers, etc..
00:09:02:09 – 00:09:38:22
Igor Plusa: Which is really cool. So you have a couple of different lounges that you can play with. You have retro cyber, the medieval, and I believe one more. And basically after you have your starting point, you can then go in there and start customizing, adding some different nfts and kind of making it your own, where you then be able to add and have your friends or whomever be able to come and have fun with you in the metaverse in this particular gaming lounge. And you can even customize, make all this your own and then sell the entire thing on the open market if you want to. Now, something about this that you that I thought was really interesting is the fact that you can bring in different NFT.
00:09:38:24 – 00:09:57:13
Igor Plusa: So this is an interoperable type of metaverse. You can bring in NFT from different chains, you can bring them in from a theory in Solana, etc.. Can you tell us a little bit more about like how this built out? I believe you said it was built on the Polygon network, yet you can still there’s still some interoperability. Can you expand on that?
00:09:58:27 – 00:10:34:14
Igor Plusa: Yes. Thanks for asking this question. That’s really great part of of the game launch, because as you said, the token itself, the GLT is going to exist on the Polygon network, but loading the anesthesia inside the launch wheel before we fully cross-chain, we have a solution that allows us to connect to our metamask or other wallet. You can use NFT from different EVM without switching the network.
00:10:35:03 – 00:11:01:05
Igor Plusa: They are being they are being simultaneously loaded into the game. So it doesn’t matter if your NFT collection is on the Polygon or Etherium or BSD, you will be able to see all of them in your lounge because you will have those special NFT displays in which you will be able to display that and the feedback that you. Oh.
00:11:03:13 – 00:11:43:08
Igor Plusa: Got it. Now that is very cool. And basically, with having this interoperability, having different people can come in and have this be cross-chain, you can come in and have these different collaborations, like you said, with these various types of companies and and layer ones. Layer twos that can come in and build within your system is. The ultimate goal here that when you think about people or when you think about the ideal person is going to be utilizing this. Is it a guys with a group of friends who want to go have like guys night by shooting pool? Or is it someone who’s looking to potentially make like a virtual nightclub? You can invite people to come in, like, have fun.
00:11:43:12 – 00:11:49:28
Igor Plusa: Like, explain to me, like, what are the what are some of like scenarios that you could see people coming and participating in Gamer Lounge?
00:11:51:15 – 00:12:27:20
Igor Plusa: Of course, there are like two ways to approach that. There are two main components of the gaming arms project. The first one are the private lounges. So those are the lounges that will be owned by my users. Basically, anyone can own their own lounge once they have it. And this this part is it’s very important for us to be able to reach as wide audience as possible, as many different groups as possible.
00:12:28:09 – 00:12:54:07
Igor Plusa: This is why we have the we have decided to use the Unreal Engine five for the game design because it allows for almost the lifelike experience, the graphics level, the level of graphics and the lights, the everything that is happening within this platform is really
00:12:55:23 – 00:13:28:06
Igor Plusa: it’s really the closest to a lifelike experience. Instead of using some of their, let’s say, style of graphic design, because in our opinion, this is one of the problems that many of the metaverse is out there. They’re kind of limiting themselves to their target audience. The players just are like non-players. Non-gamers are going to enter a metaverse that looks like like sandbox.
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00:13:29:05 – 00:13:47:28
Igor Plusa: For me, it’s kind of hard to believe that this is going to happen, honestly. I think that the if you want to really reach the wide audience of possible, you have to go for this life like experience, especially if you are going to expand into VR. We are also going to do
00:13:50:06 – 00:14:20:25
Igor Plusa: so not only not only gamers, but also casual people who have like 30 or 40 minutes or one hour a day to spend some time playing different games. And this is why we are not creating also any advanced games like some RPGs or strategy card games, etc. We are focusing on the very simple game. We divided them into three groups bar board and arcade games.
00:14:22:12 – 00:14:55:11
Igor Plusa: They are all easily accessible and don’t require you. Those require a lot of time or skill to play. So we will be able to play pool darts in future SIM card games, simple arcade games, etc. So we can just hop in for 30 minutes. Invite your friend over and have a have a game of pool with him. And then there is the second component, the public lounge, which which will be owned not by users.
00:14:56:09 – 00:15:10:05
Igor Plusa: Those will be owned by different projects, companies, code influencers, etc.. Uh, and here we are. This is like the business life. This is the most important aspect for us.
00:15:11:25 – 00:16:05:29
Igor Plusa: And this is where we have the, the biggest amount of work to do to attract different type of business partners to actually create their own representation in the metaverse. We are thinking about not only crypto project but also a real life company that would like to create their own space in the metaverse to other in the metaverse chaos and influencers who through their lounge will have like a whole new level of immersion and interaction with their communities so that they can not just speak in some chat room, but for example, once per week, then they can actually meet in the lounge and play together a game of pool, which I think is kind of cool for for this kind of community.
00:16:07:12 – 00:16:10:21
Igor Plusa: Yeah. See, I could talk for hours about this.
00:16:11:01 – 00:16:44:03
Richard Carthon: But it’s it’s a good thing because there’s there’s just there’s a lot that a lot of options here. So you have your individual person, like you said, the person that comes in one or 2 hours trying to hang out, trying to go play some games and come in and participate privately with friends or a couple of different groups that they have or even a casual group. Then you have the public side, like you said, where you can have companies directly come in. You have these other, uh, also calls can also calls and, and influencers can also make their own types of locations for people to come and participate.
00:16:44:05 – 00:17:14:18
Richard Carthon: And the whole experience of this is to provide a realistic experience. Right? There’s a reason that you’re using Unreal Engine five. You want things to feel realistic. You want people to be able to jump in and feel like they are they’re participating no matter where you are in the world and have it feel a little bit more organic in life, like even though we’re all living in this virtual world that we are in. So from a timeline standpoint, I know that you are still building a lot of this out for people who are excited to utilize this whenever it’s ready to go.
00:17:15:04 – 00:17:23:00
Richard Carthon: When is it looking like? I know right now they can go on on to the website and play with the demo that is out there. Can you give us a little bit more information on that?
00:17:24:08 – 00:17:59:29
Igor Plusa: Uh, yeah, sure. We are very proud about this. I actually do have this demo released already because it was very important for us to have it to as soon as possible to, uh, to give the people, uh, the feeling of the lounge and to show that we are actually creating something, uh, because there are so many projects that basically just have a nice beach deck and cool looking website, uh, and based on that, that they’re creating, that the whole hype and interest in the project.
00:18:00:23 – 00:18:15:00
Igor Plusa: So we, we decided to go the other way to show something to the people. I know it’s not much, but this is a starting point. And actually this month we have we have a really
00:18:17:19 – 00:18:55:11
Igor Plusa: huge amount of, of new stuff coming to the demo as you are going to see most like the first game, uh, being available, uh, some new lounges, uh, being possible to be, to be explored. I first quest with some new empty seats up in the lounge so that you will be able to participate in some quest and win, uh, different reward. Uh, and beside that, beside this web demo, we are also working on the full version of the game.
00:18:56:23 – 00:19:25:12
Igor Plusa: And this is the, and it is going to be released hopefully by the end of this year. But it also kind of depends on the release schedule for Unreal Engine five, because right now the Unreal Engine five that we are using is in early access still. Uh, so we’re kind of dependent on the release, the full release of Unreal Engine 5 to 2 also released our gate.
00:19:26:29 – 00:20:00:22
Igor Plusa: Awesome. A lot of big things coming out right now. The we are recording this in April 2022. So expect some big things coming out later this month. And whenever you’re listening to this, whether it is in a couple of weeks or a couple of years, just know that there’s a lot of amazing things coming to Game Lounge. I’m excited to see all the other future things coming as well, so thank you for sharing all that information. I want to just ask a couple of more just questions outside of just gaming lounge. And as you look across the world of cryptocurrency and nfts metaverse and where things are headed.
00:20:01:28 – 00:20:17:15
Igor Plusa: What do you think is going to be the biggest key for more people who are now entering the crypto metaverse NFT space? And as we approach mass adoption, like, what do you think are some key components to seeing that trajectory happen?
00:20:19:10 – 00:21:01:24
Igor Plusa: Uh, you know, it’s, uh, it’s a very interesting question and actually I love this topic, uh, because I myself am, I am a great believer. Uh, for not only crypto but this whole metaverse stuff as well. Uh, so this is, this is actually something that I’m thinking and talking to a lot about with, uh, with different people. Uh, I think that, uh, obviously like the very foundation, uh, for, for that, uh, is to have like a clear legal situation about all the stuff that is happening.
00:21:02:05 – 00:21:36:21
Igor Plusa: So before we see real global adoption, uh, legal and safety, it comes the kind of together. So before this, the real mass adoption, uh, people outside of the, the, the kind, the blockchain space, crypto space, uh, must have a clear situation and clear view on what is happening here and if, if and how everything is going to work in terms of, uh, in terms of legal in different, different countries.
00:21:37:11 – 00:22:08:07
Igor Plusa: This is quite complex, uh, a quite complex idea, uh, and it’s handled differently, all the work. So, uh, uh, first and foremost, the, uh, the thing, and the thing is that the adoption is not going to go up the same pace in different communities in different parts of the world. So this is the first thing that we have to think about.
00:22:09:03 – 00:22:46:27
Igor Plusa: But beside that, uh, in terms of like just simply attracting new users, uh, I think that this, the gaming and metaverse hype and everything that’s happening around this is the perfect bridge between the real life and traditional gaming and blockchain. I think this, I believe that this, this tool, this is a tool that has much more potential to bring global adoption to crypto than, for example, all the defi defi tools.
00:22:47:11 – 00:23:25:27
Igor Plusa: Uh, the decentralized finance is, uh, is great and it’s really powerful and makes often life so much easier than using the traditional finance system. Uh, but often right now, it’s still too, too complicated. Uh, whereas the gaming and this is the future of the metaverse build with blockchain and then see that, uh, it’s much easier to, to grasp and comprehend, uh, and bringing a really wide audience to, to blockchain and crypto.
00:23:26:22 – 00:24:08:26
Igor Plusa: Yeah, I think those are two great points. The first that you made around the legal pieces across the world of just making sure everything is in a place where people can participate, move faster, and make sure that they are being legally compliant based on their location. The second decentralized finance and the onramp to it is a lot more challenging than some other places, like your typical person who understands games, because most people these days play games, whether it’s on their mobile device or if they have a hardware device. Uh, you pick up a game, you insert the disc or download the game, you start playing, right? And even as it relates to blockchain, a lot of people are using this concept so there’s less that they have to think about in order to start participating.
00:24:08:28 – 00:24:41:15
Igor Plusa: Whereas in Defi, there’s a couple more steps. It’s, it’s a little bit more involved actually. So as that becomes more accessible and the on ramp to it is easier, I think we get to more mass adoption as well. So Igor, thank you for sharing that. I think those are two really good points. And it just to wrap up with two final fun questions for you with all the information that you have right now after building and doing everything you have up to this point within the space, if you could in part one of two pieces of wisdom to yourself when you first got started building out Game Lounge, what would you tell yourself?
00:24:43:07 – 00:25:01:04
Igor Plusa: Uh, don’t trust, uh, don’t trust and take your time. Because at the very beginning of our project, when started, we tried to do different stuff too fast and it backfired on.
00:25:03:15 – 00:25:28:18
Igor Plusa: Basically just take your time and build slowly. Don’t follow the hype. Don’t fall into this maelstrom that you have to do everything come the top of the bull run. Because if you have the fundamentals, if you have the project developed and you have a community that is believing in the project,
00:25:30:12 – 00:25:34:27
Igor Plusa: basically that’s all you need. And it doesn’t matter if it’s bull or bear.
00:25:36:01 – 00:26:08:05
Igor Plusa: Right. That’s a great point. And unfortunately, I think a lot of people do get caught up in the hype of the bull cycles, especially if you’re launching a product directly. And but the ones the companies who are seeing have a lot of success in the space are the ones that have a functional and working product and have spent time heads down regardless of what’s going on, just building that out so that whenever they’re ready to bring it to market, it was good to go, people liked it and people, the community are willing to stick around with something that they see in and also believe in and that they can work with.
00:26:08:07 – 00:26:16:01
Igor Plusa: So I think that is a really good piece. So Igor, as we kind of wrap up here, what is a final thoughts that you want to leave with all the listeners here today?
00:26:18:03 – 00:26:22:18
Igor Plusa: Hmm. Final thoughts? Well, just come into the game knowledge.
00:26:25:16 – 00:26:57:05
Igor Plusa: Yeah. Uh, yeah. Basically, uh, uh, I would just continue with the thought that I showed before. Uh, dumb, dumb thing to think too much about the malls that the most, uh, just the think of the blockchain and cryptocurrency, the whole, uh, and yeah, keep it, just keep doing what you are doing. And once you have everything in place, the everything is going to come together at some point.
00:26:58:07 – 00:27:06:22
Igor Plusa: Absolutely. Great. Final thought. Thank you so much for sharing that with us and for sharing your time. What are ways that people can connect with you and learn more about Game Lounge?
00:27:09:00 – 00:27:40:18
Igor Plusa: I think it is possible to do both. All the information, some of some her somewhere below the video, because we have so many different media available right now, because we are available in Facebook, Twitter, medium. We have the website Discord Telegram. There’s just so much going on. But first, I invite you to visit our Discord Channel, because this is basically the heart of the community and all the good stuff is happening there.
00:27:40:20 – 00:28:06:05
Igor Plusa: We have community calls with contests. We have like like nonstop going, different contests with awesome rewards in guilty and in the lounge and the these. So if you like the idea, then joining the discord is the best that you can make and you can even get your very first lounge for free.
00:28:07:16 – 00:28:29:15
Richard Carthon: Awesome. Well, we’ll make sure to share all of the links in the show notes. So everyone make sure you go check it out. And if you enjoyed everything that’s going on, make sure you go check out the discord at, join the community and start to participate and communicate. But again, everyone listening. Thank you for spending some time checking this out, Igor. Thank you for dropping all the knowledge and giving all this information. And for everyone listening, stay cryptocurrency.
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