During the Non-Fungible Conference in Lisbon, Portugal, we at GMGames are very excited to present an exclusive interview with Robby Yung, CEO of Animoca Brands. He sat down with our Chief Editor, Shuab, to give us an insight into how Animoca Brands leads innovation and growth in Web3 gaming.
In this two-part series, Robby discusses his story, predictions about the future of Web3, and the fascinating developments at Animoca Brands.
Shuab (GM Games): First of all, it’s a pleasure to have this interview slot with you. We’ve been looking forward to it for a long, long time. Let’s begin by asking: Who is Robby Yung? What is your backstory?
Robby Yung (Animoca Brands CEO): I’m a game industry entrepreneur with a background in telecoms, media, and technology. My journey in the tech world started in the early days of the internet, often referred to as Web1, where I was involved in various tech startups. I’ve always been passionate about technology and its potential to transform industries. Over the years, I worked across different sectors – telecoms, media, and technology – gaining a broad perspective on how these fields intersect and evolve.
About a decade ago, I transitioned into the gaming industry when I joined Animoca Brands. My entry into gaming was somewhat serendipitous. I reconnected with an old friend, Yat Siu, who is the co-founder of Animoca Brands. We had known each other since the early days of the internet, and our paths crossed again when Yat had just started Animoca as a Web2 free-to-play mobile game studio.
The idea of joining Animoca was exciting for me because it combined several elements I was passionate about: technology, media, and a new domain – gaming. Even though I wasn’t a massive gamer as an adult, I was fascinated by the gaming medium and its potential to innovate and engage users. The opportunity to contribute to this dynamic industry and help shape the future of gaming was too compelling to pass up.
Shuab (GM Games): Before we jump into it, I’ve got some quickfire questions – are you ready?
Quick-Fire Questions
Shuab: Favorite game growing up?
- Robby Yung: Tetris. Before Tetris, it was Pac-Man.
Shuab: Least favorite game?
- Robby Yung: MMOs, because I don’t have the patience for them.
Shuab: Preferred gaming platform: mobile, PC, console, or browser?
- Robby Yung: Mobile.
Shuab: Do you own any Metaverse clothing?
- Robby Yung: Yes, it’s the hazard of the job.
Shuab: When was the last time you made an appearance in the Metaverse?
- Robby Yung: About a month ago, unless Twitter Spaces counts, then all the time!
Shuab: That was great. Thanks for giving us insight into you as a person. Right, let’s move on to the more in-depth questions. For anyone who doesn’t know, please tell us who Animoca Brands is and what the company’s vision is when it comes to gaming and Web3.
Robby Yung: We are a game developer and publisher. We focus exclusively on building games in Web3. We’re also a very active investor in Web3. We’re probably the most active investor, frankly. We believe very much in the space and in the inevitability of Web3 being the next iteration of the internet – we think that gaming will lead the adoption of the consumer side. Because gamers are essentially, you know, as an audience, they require no training. They see the value of virtual currency or virtual goods because they’ve already been using virtual goods for so many years that they understand the value of virtual items and digital items. They understand that buying digital goods has just as much value to them as buying physical.
We are at a time when we can actually fulfill that promise of giving them true ownership of those digital items. We think that they will be the first ones to adopt the technology.
Shuab: Side question: I see Animoca Brands everywhere partnering up with everyone. We’ll come on to partners in a little bit. You guys have almost taken over the space because of how much you guys care about the industry and the ecosystem; who comes in second place to Animoca?
Robby Yung: I think that we’re somewhat unique because we’re very diversified. And we have the benefit of having been relatively early in the space. At the time we joined, not many companies were focused on content. Most were focused on financial services when it came to the blockchain usage. And so, because we were early, we were able to create a relatively broad footprint. We started investing and we invested quite broadly -but don’t forget that the cheques were very small, because we were only, you know, small companies at the time. So it enabled us to kind of put our fingers in lots of different pies.
And as you know, the Web3 community is very collaborative, so we’re able to really leverage a lot of our friends in the community to grow together. We do business partnerships together, we do co-investment together, we do brand partnerships together, and we all try to elevate each other within the space. And I think, frankly, a great example of that is this event [NFC Portugal 2024] we’re sitting in, right now – because if it weren’t for the strength of the French Web3 community, this event would not exist.
Shuab: Wow – that’s a huge statement [the presence of The Sandbox and their announcement of the The Sandbox DAO] Yeah, I think definitely regarding your market influence and how you guys almost build out these ecosystems yourself. You find these early projects and then support them; their growth is diversified on almost every level.
Robby Yung: But there’s no magic to it, our belief we’re not trying to pick winners to make, you know, 100x investments. It’s nice, but that’s not the focus, the focus is to grow the entire ecosystem, because our belief is that as long as the ecosystem grows, we will be a beneficiary of that. And we really believe in this idea of tokens as the manifestation of network effects. So if you believe that, then yes, it makes sense to invest in as many tokens as possible. Because the more you own, the more network effects you can create. And so there’s no such thing as a bad token.
Shuab: With that in mind, how does Animoca brands plan to expand their market reach globally? How do you keep up that momentum?
Robby Yung: The biggest constraint is time. It’s about trying to create a platform for collaboration. One of the things we’ve done recently is to create our Mocaverse project – this is another initiative that allows us to be able to collaborate more broadly with a diverse array of companies in the space. We were dependent on one of our studios called The Sandbox for a while to do that. The Sandbox is a relatively blank canvas where most kinds of companies can collaborate with them in one way or another. With Mocaverse, we’re trying to do that in a different way, but also have a platform that’s not designed in the Web2 version of a platform, meaning a walled garden, but it’s a platform in that anybody can collaborate with Microverse whether you are a brand with IP, whether you are a game, whether you are a DeFi protocol, it doesn’t matter Mocaverse a community and we can create some way to work together with our Mocaverse community.
Shuab: In terms of Animoca Brands and the Mocaverse, you guys always have a skill for putting a certain amount of risk into new technologies. AI is the talk of the town at the moment. What innovative technologies is Animoca currently exploring beyond AI and blockchain?
Robby Yung: We’re always interested in new technologies. I think at the moment, we’re in a different phase of Web3, where we’re focused on the refinement of tools within Web3. I think there are narratives that are still not set in stone – we still see people launching layer 2 and layer 1 blockchain infrastructure. We still see people launching wallets; we still see people launching new marketplaces. Who would have thought 18 months ago that Opensea was not the default largest marketplace for NFTs? I mean, and not only that, but that they’ve been replaced by two subsequent competitors along the way. So, there are still many undetermined outcomes in the space, which is great because we think all this competition is very healthy. We also think that the move towards, for example, with NFTs, the move towards, you know, Magic Eden having a lot of traffic now, hopefully, is a reflection of the fact that they’ve actually taken the decision to honor creator royalties. We think that’s a very important part of sustaining the ecosystem. So we’re spending a lot of time on AI. But frankly, we have our we have our hands full with what’s going on in the Web3 community.
Shuab: In terms of VR Goggles, we have had a lot of noise around Apple Vision Pro; Yes it is pretty inaccessible to regular consumers – is this something you guys are experimenting with?
Robby Yung: Some of our portfolio companies have experimented with it, but we’re generally not enthusiast regarding VR. VR is really cool, but in my personal opinion, it’s too niche because the constraint of the accessibility of the hardware is so difficult. The same problem exists in the game industry. The game industry was tiny until mobile came along. Because not everybody could afford a console.
I spent most of my life living in China and you couldn’t buy a console in China. You could buy a cloned one for sure, but you couldn’t buy a legitimate one. So it’s that inaccessibility, that barrier to entry created by hardware, that just means it will be harder [for VR] than for software products to get adopted. Whereas, if we can cater to the platform that everybody has, most of the world accesses the internet through a smartphone – so that’s ideally where we need to be.
Shuab: As investors, we are switching gears now, what do you look for in investable projects?
Robby Yung: We actually had a whole panel on this earlier today. We look for a few things. Obviously, the team is the most important thing. Right? Because even a good team can overcome less than great ideas. Because you can always get more ideas. But it’s hard to get a better team. I think the other thing that we also look for is whether the team themselves really understands Web3, particularly people who come from the Web2 gaming industry. Sometimes it’s a challenge for them to make that mental migration to what a Web3 economy represents.
You have to really be open-minded about completely changing the way you think about a lot of things, and that’s hard. If you’ve had a very successful career, being good at something, and then people tell you, well, actually, those skills you have may not apply, you have to be open to completely doing it another way. Then it kind of questions, “what’s the value I’m adding?” They’re reluctant to let go of what they know about what they do, but they must figure out how to balance it. Otherwise, if you just take a Web2 approach to building a Web3 economy, it’s doomed to fail.
Shuab: When you say about going another way, how can creators generate ongoing revenues through NFTs?
Robby Yung: Firstly, the most important thing is that marketplaces and places that trade NFTs must honor creator royalties because creator royalties are what powers the ecosystem. I think one of the things that Web3 is so great at is allowing us to have much lower-cost infrastructure so that creators can get a bigger share of the revenue of their own products. So the main blockers for creators is really to figure out distribution and to figure out how to build that audience for whatever their product is.
Now, when you say NFTs, that could be lots of different things. It could be a PFP project, it could be in Game of playable items. It could be artwork or tickets for a concert. So, all of those things will have different distribution mechanisms. But I think one thing that’s becoming clear is that building community around those is really important, and leaning into passionate communities that help you virally market what those products are because they’re passionate evangelists for whatever they enjoy.
In the Web3 gaming industry, the success of many games with audiences (that in Web2 would otherwise be considered small) shows that they’re able to monetize at much higher levels, both in terms of the percentage of paying users and the average spend per user -proving that they are very sustainable businesses.
Web3 has shown us that we can create products that monetize adequately at a much smaller scale so that it’s going to lead to a blossoming of content that is for highly engaged, more niche audiences that you don’t end up having to be a game with that needs 200 million players to survive.
Shuab: We’ve normally seen successes when communities partner up with collaborations, etc. Can you elaborate on any upcoming collaborations or partnerships that Animoca is working on without giving too much away?
Robby Yung: I would say that the best place to start would be the Mocaverse community. Because the Mocaverse the raison d’etre of the Mocaverse community is to do a collaboration – to help cross-pollinate our community with other communities within our ecosystem. And then more broadly across Web3. We recently did activations with everything from Pixels to Cross The Ages and all types of different games.
The idea is that in Web3, we have the ability to cross-incentivize and create network effects for those collaborations. So like with Pixels is probably the most noteworthy one, we onboarded half a million users into Pixels. We did this by giving incentives to welcome those users. and then we gave different incentives to those users to go and try Pixels. We’re actually replicating what we would call the User Acquisition- a campaign, but it’s done in a way that keeps all of the money in the ecosystem because the money is not being paid to Facebook and Apple to advertise. It’s actually being paid into our project. Yeah so it’s much healthier for the ecosystem.
For now, we’ll wrap it up there. Check out Part 2 of this article series- where we will be picking up the interview. Lot’s more to come as we cover Web3 ID systems, fun games within Web3, empty metaverses, interoperability, brand conflicts and more.