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Join me today for Episode 328 of Bitcoin And . . .

From the archives: Join David Bennett in this classic episode from 2020 as he explores Bitcoin's intersection with gaming, discussing user experience, Lightning Network integration, and the future of blockchain gaming with Thunder Games founder Jack Everett.


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[00:00:00] David Bennett:

Good morning. This is David Bennett, and this is Bitcoin Hand, a podcast where I try to find the edge effect between the worlds of Bitcoin, gaming, permaculture,   podcasting, and education to gain a better understanding of all. Edge effect is a concept from ecology describing a greater diversity of life where the edges of two systems overlap. While species from either system can be found at the edge, it is important to note there are species in the overlap that exist in neither system, and that is what I seek to uncover. So join me in discovering the variety of things being created as Bitcoin rubs up against other systems.   It is Tuesday   07:16   a. M. Central standard time it's the 11/24/2020   and we're getting pretty close to Thanksgiving Day here in The United States   This is episode three twenty eight of Bitcoin and Jack Everett is joining us from Thunder Games.  

We, talked about his company Thunder Games and what they're producing   a little bit, you know, some some, a little bit into mobile game stuff, you know, that that, you know, that kind of thing. So,   we'll be doing that. That's what we're gonna be doing.   Before we do that, however,   let's get into,   let's get into a little bit of,   headlines just so we know what the hell's going around, you know, going around the horn.   Here at Decrypt, they're basically gonna cover,   oh, let's see. OKX is giving customers up to a thousand dollars for some godforsaken   reason.  

Financial giant SBI wants to borrow your Bitcoin. It's a Japanese financial services player.   They want to borrow your Bitcoin at 1%   annual interest rate.   Oh, 1%.   Oh.   Oh, good Lord. So and, clearly,   if you've been under a rock since you woke up out of bed, if you're here in The United States,   Bitcoin is has broken $19,000   we don't know what it's gonna do. What's it at right now? It's at $19,262   according to well, I'm looking at Binance. Now I'm looking at Bitfinex.   So yeah yeah   we're we're breaking through that kind of crap.   Binance is evicting all of its US users they've given everybody fourteen days to leave their exchange if you are a United States Binance customer get your shit off the exchange.  

Honestly, it never should have been there to begin with.   Let's see. What's going on over at Cointelegraph?   That was all out of Decrypt, by the way, just just in case I didn't mention it.   Let's see. Oh, yeah. Bitcoin hits the home page of the Wall Street Journal. That's not the first time that's happened,   guys. There's Ethereum 2 point o stuff. It's, you know, apparently,   it's gonna,   like, actually be able to launch because some people were able to stake enough to finally get it to move. I don't know. It's just bizarre.   God. The Fed chair or, the Fed chair, Janet Yellen,   has been tapped by president-elect   Biden to be The United States   Secretary Of The Treasury.  

Hello, Tarkas, my old friend.   Oh, man. I can't wait for some confirmation or any not confirmation hearings, but any kind of said I need Bitcoin sign guy to come back and and haunt Janet Yellen like the freaking plague, dude. What else is going on here?   Oh, yeah.   Crypto.com   secures regulatory approvals from Maltese authorities.   There's some XRP news. Apparently, it's not doing well today even though it has been having a run up.   Let's see. What's going on over at CoinDesk?   Because the CoinDesk is spinning up Ethereum 2 point o node. Good luck on that. Nobody else can seem to do it, so whatever.   Is there anything else?  

IRS again warns crypto investors that they underreported   gains.   And PayPal CEO Shulman says he's bullish on Bitcoin as a currency.   Things seem to be looking pretty good today honestly,   is there anything over a crypto potato   that seems really interesting? No, not really, they have this bad habit of reporting on mostly shit coins. Although John Lennon and Yoko Ono's son,   you know, Bitcoin gives me optimism is what,   Sean is saying. Sean is,   just Sean Ono what was it? Sean Ono Lennon.   John Lennon's son.   Apparently, he's he's been kind of into bitcoin for a while. So, you know, that's good. That's that that's always nice to see. Anything going on over crypto news?   It's all the same shit you know bitcoin is the only thing that really matters and   everything else is kind of crap except well there's this quote from sailor   Michael sailor   from micro strategy   Bitcoin is a key engineering advancement for the progression of humanity.  

I cannot disagree with that. I I I just can't. So let's move on into   the future. With CNBC.com   forward slash futures and commodities, we have oil up,   1.35.   Oh, nice. So West Texas is trading at $43.64   a barrel. Brent, North Sea up likewise, 1.11%.   It's going for $46.57   per barrel.   Natural gas is up one and a half it's going for $2.75   for a thousand cubic feet of that. All the metals are down except for copper.   I don't know maybe home building is on the rise or something which is probably a bad thing to have happen right now.   Gold, however. Oh, God. Gold is tanking, dude.  

1.6%   to the downside   and silver is even worse. 2.5   to the downside. Gold is going to come in at $18.00   $5.   Silver's gonna come in at $23 an ounce. Platinum is kinda meh. It's $927.   Palladium is down a full point, $2,333.   Indexes, oh, we're saved. To the MET side,   Dow futures up a point, S and P futures up almost a point, NASDAQ futures up a third of a point, and the S and P Mini   is up 1.19.   So we're saved in a mess sort of way.   Bitcoin, real money. I'm showing   on bidinfocharts.com   that we have a price of   $19,205.   I got a high over at Bitfinex at 19,200   and no. That's Coinbase Pro showing 19,255.  

Nice.   HitBTC   is the lowest when I got 19,151.   So a full   $104   arbitrage range. Whoop dee doo. 328,000   transactions made in the last twenty four hours.   That's almost   14,000   transactions on average per hour. Two point three six million BTC have been sitting in   around the horn in the last twenty four hours.   Ninety eight thousand seven hundred and two BTC are being sent every hour on the hour. On the average.   The average transaction value is 7.2 BTC. The median transaction is holding at 0.03   BTC. That's about $630.   Block times are slightly high. Ten minutes and seventeen seconds.  

Point five BTC being taken in fees on a per block basis.   72.5   BTC being taken in fees overall in the last twenty four hours. A precipitous   drop in hash rate,   14%   to the downside, but we're still at a 28.9   x hashes per second. I don't think that's really gonna hurt us all that much.   Not even gonna talk about the rest of this stuff. This stuff looks sick. We're there's   I guess it's alt season, guys. I don't know. It's just it's   bullshit.   I'll give you this one. Litecoin is at $87.   Dollars 80 7 for like   I   really?   Real   amazing. Dogecoin, though, is at 0.0037.  

Excuse me. Making Dogecoin probably the most stable shitcoin of all the shitcoins that were ever shitcoin.   And at 41,000   transactions in the last twenty four hours, it's smoking Ethereum Classic and Bcash   as usual. And then Litecoin is coming in at 74,000   transactions in the last twenty four hours. I don't know. I don't get it. Clark Moody. Let's find out what he's doing today.   We have 26 blocks about to clear.   And when they do, they will take 32,652   transactions down with them.   There is   $10.47   BTC in the Lightning Network, and that is now worth $20,000,000   Who'd have thunk   it? 7,818   nodes carrying 35,961   channels.  

Tor capacity is at 51.5%   of the Lightning Network, so more than half of the Lightning Network now running over Tor.   That means that 539.4   are in the Tor side of the Lightning Network.   That is gonna have 2,628   nodes. Clark Moody is reflecting a price of   $19,218.   Clark also says there's 18,552,812.9   BTC in circulation.   And with today's price, you can now trade 1 Bitcoin for 10.5 ounces of gold.   I don't recommend doing that,   but the market cap of gold versus, Bitcoin or market cap of Bitcoin versus gold is now standing at 3.03%.   Market capitalization   has hit an all time high for Bitcoin at $356,400,000,000   That's a billion   with a b   for all the people that were pointing at me and laughing   Dude,   have fun staying poor.  

Let's get into some interview.   Jack,   welcome  

[00:10:33] Jack Everett:

to Bitcoin and how are you doing today? Yeah. I'm doing good. Thanks. Thanks very much for having me.  

[00:10:39] David Bennett:

Yeah. Yeah.   Now,   Jack,   I got your contact from Desiree,   Dickerson   over at Lightning Labs, but we I'd done an interview with her about gaming and Mint Gox and   asked her, you know, hey,   who should I be doing next? And she I think you were the first up on the   list. And you were the founder and, leader of Thunder Games. Correct?  

[00:11:05] Jack Everett:

Yeah. Thunder Games. That's it. Spelled t h n d r. And I'm pretty I'm pretty pleased that people are managing to understand my branding there because that was a bit of a a random thing to try.  

[00:11:17] David Bennett:

You know, that that's a good point, because branding, you know, everywhere is, you know, fairly important. But I I mean, I immediately got it, and it made you know, it it especially makes a lot of sense considering that the whole thing is followed by the lightning bolt emoji. That helps a lot. Yeah. Well, actually, so in some countries like,  

[00:11:36] Jack Everett:

Spanish speaking countries, I think they they it's not landing   there quite so well.   I've had a few people quote me as t h n d r games. So,   but I think it'll I think, yeah, just the clues of the lightning bolt in the logos hopefully will help. Because I get I get, obviously,   it's they don't say the word thunder. It must I don't know how would it thunder is in Spanish, but,   so that's why it's not obvious, is it? Because it's not spelled the same.  

[00:12:03] David Bennett:

Right. So let let's get some I I kinda let's start out with some some context here. I kinda like,   wanna know a little bit more about you, but let's take you back to high school or   or rather, you know, The United Kingdom's equivalency   of high school. So you're chilling out like 16,   you know, in school. What do you what are you doing? What are you thinking of? What do you wanna do?  

[00:12:28] Jack Everett:

Wow. That's a philosophical   question there.   Yeah. I guess,   I I I always wanted to make games when I was a kid,   and I think that was just because I liked playing them all the time. Like, I used to like playing Mario Kart and,   Destruction Derby and those sorts of games. Tomb Raider was what I used to play a lot.   So, yeah, I just always kinda wanted to to make games, I think, when I was a kid.   So I was either thinking about that or football, but the soccer.  

[00:13:00] David Bennett:

Yeah. Well two things.   Well, so, was there any was there any outlets for that, provided to you by your, by your school? Did they have, like, a, you know, computer programming classes or anything like that?  

[00:13:14] Jack Everett:

No. Not really. We just used to do   spreadsheets.   It was all like business related computer stuff. I I don't really we did do some programming   for,   like, robots. That was quite cool. So you could, like, instruct these little Lego robots to do things.   But, no, we didn't actually have any,   games computer games or that kind of program, just basic   industrial style work related ones.  

[00:13:42] David Bennett:

Were were those Lego the Lego bots that you were talking about? Is is that that Lego's Mindstorms?  

[00:13:48] Jack Everett:

Did that does that ring a bell? No. But it was like I don't know if it was Lego. It was actual Lego. It was   I don't know. It was like you we were making cranes. It was like a crane, and you could program it to move left and right and pick up something or, you know Sounds like it sort of sounds like an erector set there.   Yeah. I mean, yeah. I don't know what it was.  

[00:14:10] David Bennett:

So, well, like so you're gaming when you're a kid.   When did you first pick up would you when did you first pick up, you know, video gaming and kind of fall in love with it? Because we all do.  

[00:14:21] Jack Everett:

Yeah. Well, I think getting addicted to it is more what happens to you when you're a kid. It's like your first crush with addiction, isn't it?   I think,   the first games I played were on the NES. So that was, like, my era was when I was, like, 10, I guess. I can't really remember. Okay. But,   yeah, the NES,   one of the guy yeah. I used to play,   Mario   and,   like, a WrestleMania game on the NES. And one of my friends had Doom had Doom. Yeah. And we used to play that, and I used to get so many nightmares after going around his house to school playing Doom. It must have been his older brother's game or something. I was should not be playing that.  

[00:15:00] David Bennett:

No. That was, yeah, that was that the Doom suit, the Doom stuff was was kinda brutal. Although it   launched the the whole,   I would say, online gaming,   element, but that's not it. It basically was the pre,   you know, the proof, for lack of better term, the preimage   of being able to download games and all that. So, I mean, just the game itself was revolutionary at the time, but the fact that they released it   as in, like, an FTP file,   on a download,   across, you know, across for a a special I think you had to have a dot e d u email address to be able to get into the waiting room to get that thing. And their servers just their servers just melted down. It was like they just got lit on fire.   Yeah. I I don't know. There was just a  

[00:15:50] Jack Everett:

go go ahead. I was just gonna say, yeah, I've seen a like, obviously, I was a bit too young to understand that side of things, but I did see a documentary recently about,   they were in a in a on one of the episodes. It was really interesting about I don't know exactly what you're talking about and how they were like the,   they were like on the forefront of, like, the multiplayer thing as well.   And, like, basically, every kind of,   growth hack for a game that would that you needed at that time, they, like, invented   effectively.  



[00:16:20] David Bennett:

Yeah. Yeah. And it was really funny.   I was on and off again with a girl out in college and I had the misfortune. She   made the wrong mistake of moving into the vacant house next door as a rental with her and her friends.   And we ended up breaking up. And during that time of the breakup was when one of her best friends who was dating John Carmack at the time,   John Carmack comes and takes them all to Disney World.   Oh. Really? And then and then we got back together after that, and I'm like, man, that shit ain't fair, dude.   And for those listeners that don't know who John Carmack is, he was one of the   dynamic duo that that came up with Doom. I think he was the one that   figured out how to get a PC to do side scrolling. I know the the,   documentary you're talking about. I can't remember the name of it, but it's awfully good. It's awfully good, man.  

So when did BTC run over you like a truck? Like, when did you get hit by Bitcoin?  

[00:17:27] Jack Everett:

Yeah. I think it was,   probably   it's hard for me to I remember I don't remember the exact what how I heard about it or the date, but I remember the I actually remember the block site the block site, the blockchain download size was eight gigabytes.   So someone one of your listeners can figure it out for me and tweet me.   But I remember it was, like, eight point something, and I download it took me, like, ages to download, and I was like, this is ridiculous.   No one's gonna use this.   Like, who's gonna download this?   I'll get to it as, like, I don't know, 2013,   '20 '12 or something.  



[00:18:04] David Bennett:

And I probably don't know where I   I'm thinking more like probably 2011,   like, at the front end at eight gigabytes because it's   what is it? One,   I I could I could tell if I had my note up, but I'd I'd I don't wanna get into all that. You were early. You saw it or you saw it a lot earlier than I did. I'll I'll guarantee that. Well, I think I just was it wasn't like  

[00:18:29] Jack Everett:

I   was really particularly   recognized how good it was. It was more that,   I just was bored, you know, one weekend and heard about it. I guess there must have been a massive price rise at the same time. Otherwise, I'm not sure how I would have heard about it. And I was interested in it because,   I I was always, like, working on, like, mobile games at the time, and, obviously, they had they had virtual currencies and things. So I was kinda just wanted to see what it was about.   So, yeah, that's   I basically just downloaded the,   Bitcoin core client and   around then. And I did do some some mining with, a Jalapeno   miner from I can't remember who it was. Bit   Fury, I think. No. Bit something.  



[00:19:14] David Bennett:

Yeah. That's a long time ago. That's like I think that that may predate Butterfly Labs. Yeah. I know. It was, but it was Butterfly Labs.  

[00:19:22] Jack Everett:

Yeah, it was Butterfly Labs jalapeno   eight   five, gigahertz thing or something.   Oh, wow. Because my I I literally just bought a miner for fun to try it out. And as soon as I got it, obviously, it was not profitable because it took so long to arrive.   But Oh,  

[00:19:40] David Bennett:

Well, at least you got yours.   Yeah. You know, Jack, at least you got got yours because they hosed the living daylights out of everybody at the very end where they just it was like one of the first exit scams in the industry. They just Really? Disappeared.   I mean, I'm not sure. Yeah. There was a there was a lot I remember that there was a lot of people that were waiting on their minors, and then at the very end, they just didn't get them. And I'm pretty sure that they also didn't get their money back either. But we see we see a lot of that in this in this industry from well, I was about to say from time to time, but it's becoming more more and more.   Yeah. So now so   so when you first got into Bitcoin or you first started looking at it, there was an immediate connection with gaming? Like, you were already looking at that, or was it something that was the connection to gaming something that you started thinking of a little bit later?  



[00:20:30] Jack Everett:

The,   the connection to gaming at the start was not was not strong. It was just more like, I know about virtual currencies in games,   and then I've heard about this, like,   digital currency. And I was just like, oh, what's the difference? Like,   how how does it work? Like, because it was obviously brand new. I kinda Right. I don't even know people were calling it blockchain then or some or if if that was a term. You know?   More famously   famous term then.   So, yeah, it didn't really I didn't really put it together with games straight away. But at that time, I did think is that it couldn't work for games because it was,   too slow   to confirm. You know? How you couldn't can't wait an hour   for the for the transaction to confirm in a game. Right. Needs to be straight away.  

And, also, it was just incredibly   complicated to use. It was quite obvious. It was Yes.   Like, I was just got scared copying and pasting a,   you know, public key into a into   a website to cash something out because I wasn't sure that my copy and paste had worked correctly. Like, when there's money involved, do you start questioning, did my copy and paste work? Like, if I copied this string correctly. So I was like, I want if if I'm scared of this, like, people are gonna be   too scared to use it almost. Like, there is a I don't know. Do you get that where you get a bit like, well, I need to double check?  

[00:21:52] David Bennett:

Oh, I still get that, Jack. There is there the only   okay. The only time that I don't get that is when I'm using lightning. But if I'm using if I'm doing a main chain transaction and I'm moving something between wallets,   I get freaked out. And what really messes my head up and I'm I'm glad I'm well, I wish I was one of the whales,   but I'm not. So I don't have to worry about this. But I I see it like you know, I'll see a whale alert come across, and it'll say   $350,000,000   worth of BTC has been transferred in this one transaction. And I'm like, all I can think of is,   yeah, buddy. What did you how much   did you drink so that you could feel good about press and send?  

Because that would scare the piss out of me, man.  

[00:22:37] Jack Everett:

Yeah. Whenever I said just before I press send, they go and make a cup of tea and just drink it first and then come back and then make sure I've done everything correctly.   But you're right about lightning. That's true. I never I never get scared with lightning. I just   just do it.   I don't know why. Yeah. The amounts are   oh, go ahead. I was just gonna say, I I guess it's because,   the format of how you pay someone is almost backwards, isn't it? Like, they send you the invoice sort of, a little different format.  

[00:23:11] David Bennett:

Yeah. I really like that. And I also really like that, you know, the the for this kind of well, I always did like the,   push   aspect of, you know, obviously, both, you know, Bitcoin and and, like, you know, and subsequently Lightning is that, you know, once I give an address to somebody, unlike giving my credit card number, nobody can ever do anything with that ever again. It's a it's a one time deal   if and only if I decide.   And that's really where the light bulb moment kind of went off, you know, went off for me is the first transaction that I did and really realizing,   man, I have full control over this. There's there's no way that the receiver of that Bitcoin transaction when I've made my first one was ever gonna be able to take anything from me again, which is not the case with credit cards. And that's what that's what I hate about them. But let's   kinda get into, like, when so you get out of high school, you go to college, and   you're all into computer graphics.  

Not not as much   doing, you know, program well, clearly, you have to program and understand programming basics. But your emphasis was graphics and not like SQL database query manufacturing   or front end development. It was all about graphics.   Was that just something that, like, you're kinda, like, maybe,   more artistic and just went to the visual side?  

[00:24:33] Jack Everett:

Yeah. I guess so. I I'm a bit of an all rounder. So I'm   quite interested in the sort of artistic side of things.   And   yeah. So my my course actually at university was did have some computer science, like, hardcore computer science stuff. So I did do some SQL, but it wasn't the focus. So the I'd say, like, 70% was the graphics. But, actually,   it was,   a lot of maths. So computer graphics is really you have to be really, really good at maths to to do it, because Yeah. You have to know about   matrices and,   all kind of crazy three d mathematics   to understand,   how how it's all put together.  

So it was like although I did kinda go into it thinking, oh, yeah. This will be artistic, and you can be, like, artistic with computer graphics.   It actually was very mathematical to get your art on the screen, so it's kind of a mixture.  

[00:25:31] David Bennett:

Yeah. I remember the do you remember,   watching the movie Tron?  

[00:25:35] Jack Everett:

Yep.  

[00:25:37] David Bennett:

Man, did you read about the backstory on how Disney what they had to do to make the graphics in that movie? Because there was no front end. There was no there was no graphic user interface for anything even remotely approaching a three d modeling editor. Yeah. Nothing.  

[00:25:52] Jack Everett:

It was I've actually read about that, but I can imagine, like I mean, so   I just did computer graphics at university,   and then I I did,   special effects as my first job. And, like, just in the ten years or fifteen years since then,   like,   things have changed so much. Well, the stuff I had to do at university, you just don't have to worry about now. You don't have to you don't need to know any maps to do   games.   You just need to, like, drag and drop things.   Whereas when I started, it's like you had to know   exactly how the mathematics. Otherwise, it was just I like I did my master's on collision detection,   which was like   Uh-huh. You know, for your listeners,   the computing how if a bullet strikes   a person in a first person shooting game type mathematics.  

But you don't need to worry about that when you make a game now.   All that stuff No. In Unity,  

[00:26:46] David Bennett:

yeah, in Unity, you you just drop a collision,   collision detector, you know, on whatever it is that you want and then hook those wires up, and it's pretty much a done deal.   Yeah. It it's amazing. You know, my boss at Texas Tech, we were, I was the   administrator for the three d animation lab out at the library there. Me and my boss, that's we talked about games all the time and just   what you know, what Unity and,   Unreal and, the other engines solve for us now that he had to hard code   not more than ten years before me and him met. And it was just amazing seeing that happen. So you it's not just Thunder Games. You you're still   you're still doing stuff with FireZoo. Is that correct?  



[00:27:31] Jack Everett:

Yeah. So, FireZoo is a is another games company that I have, which is,   not my primary focus now. I'm trying to make the,   Thunder Games one more of a success. But,   Fire Zoo is like I did I made a different company for it. I could have put it under the same brand,   but I decided to do a separate one in case, like, the Bitcoin thing put me on, like, blacklists and made my games, like,   I guess,   shadow banned on Google Play or something   just to keep it separate,   which I think has happened,   to be honest. Really? Yeah. Oh,   that's a bummer, man. Yeah. There's a so I had the first game, Bitcoin Bounce,   and it was getting, like, a thousand downloads a day from, like, organic search.  

And then all of a sudden, it was zero.   Wow. Yeah. So I can't know for sure if it's, like, kind of been   suppressed or if it is literally, like, I just got lucky with this kind of random   organic searching that was happening, or they tried a different algorithm or something.   But, anyway, that's why I did two different companies just in case something weird happened.  

[00:28:40] David Bennett:

Yeah. And I've got a couple of questions about app development and having to navigate all that stuff a little bit later. But   so when you found Lightning,   was was that the moment when you're going, this is for games? This can be for games? Or was it not that way?  

[00:28:57] Jack Everett:

It wasn't no. It wasn't exactly like that because I did so when I went and researched Lightning,   which was,   yeah, I guess, like, March   2019   was when I started looking at it.   I   didn't think   it was gonna work still because   it was I actually thought it was even more like, even though we talked earlier about the new sort of the way that it really works for the invoices is kind of   makes you less scared.   I actually felt like it made it more complicated.   Although you had the advantages of it being in an instant payment or near instant,   and you could send small amounts, which is good for gaming. I just still felt like it was like   the the scanning QR codes and all this stuff was   just, like, too much of, roadblocks for people to onboard to it. But then,   I stumbled across the l n URL protocol, which   is kind of like an organic thing that spawned from the for people with wallets to be able to cash cash out and pay for things on   web services.  

And that,   encapsulates that logic that a user normally has to do, which is like create your own invoice, send it to the person who's gonna pay you, and then receive the money.   So because that encapsulates the logic,   it made the user experience, like, 10 times better. So I was like, well, yeah. That's it then. I can just do it with any URL. So and that's where you'll see in my games is I   I deliberately have no, like, logging in. You don't have to log in or anything. You just tap a button, and it creates an l n URL,   which lets the user cash out. So   once I actually   made that sort of one click cash out with the l n URL stuff,   that's when I realized, oh, yeah. This is actually something   that's got no friction   that can onboard people. It's it's actually fun to use, and it can onboard new people because they haven't got to learn anything about   invoices   or the Lightning Network or anything because they're just tapping a button and it opens their wallet. What they need to do is download a wallet and then tap this button in my game,   and they get some Bitcoin.  



[00:31:06] David Bennett:

Yeah. User experience, you know, is just one of the most important things ever, and it doesn't matter what the product or service is. It's absolutely user experience is absolutely critical, and those people that don't   that don't take it seriously, I think, you know, there's only,   honestly, there's only one thing that I know of that has the most terrible user experience that people will just go ahead and fight through because they just love the game so much, and that's a game called Dwarf Fortress.   And even the developer of this thing,   like, it's him and his brother.  

And if you haven't heard of it, I won't get into it, but it's like this immense game with this massive rule set. I mean, the it's just this it's almost mind boggling   when you look at the structure of it.   But the user experience is so bad,   and every like,   there's not even a unifying theme between different,   engagement scenarios where you're, like, setting up your doors to, like, you know, you're gonna armor them and give them swords and stuff like that. That versus something else that's in the game is like it was built by two completely separate people, yet it was actually built by the very same person. He's the first to admit I suck at user experience. That's  

[00:32:18] Jack Everett:

the problem when you're just a small team, then you you you don't,   you have blind spots, don't you? You can't   you can't make the best thing on on every kinda in every discipline. He obviously made something good. Otherwise, no one would fight for it. He must be amazing at one particular discipline.  

[00:32:37] David Bennett:

It well, it the whole thing is the whole thing was based on a synthetic   story generator. This thing will actually   he's got a he's got a program   that causes a computer to get these, like, just weird inputs.   And through that, sort of like, you know, gen ginning up your own, you know, wallet address. In but in this case, it gens up   a history of   this   this game. And it's not what I mean history. It's like in English, it is readable.   He never wrote a scrap of it. And yet full sentences   with punctuation,   proper names   and all the sentences make sense and they're all cohesive.  

I still don't know how he did that. And that's one of the things that that I think because it's like you're I mean, you can generate 10,000 years worth of history.   It's   it's bizarre. If you've never seen Dwarf Fortress, I told to talk to Samson Moe and   Wayne Wan Chang out of,   oh, God,   I'm so embarrassed.   Infinite Fleet. Yes. Infinite Fleet. And they hadn't seen it either. And I'm like, dude, you gotta go see you gotta go see it just for the story generation aspect because it's amazing. So,   yeah, just so if you get time,   research Dwarf Fortress and and be astounded and amazed and also just like, oh my god. Nobody's gonna ever play this.  

So   Thunder Games. Alright. So I wanna I wanna kinda dig into this. Specifically,   what I I know that you you said that you kinda started,   Thunder Games to get it to where it was decoupled from FireZoo.   But what what caused you to actually say, I'm gonna do Thunder Games?  

[00:34:22] Jack Everett:

So I actually have had some problems with,   Apple and Google in the past of, like, taking my games down because they didn't like them or,   too too violent, one of them was. And   I've always kind of, like,   wanted to,   like, do something where you're like a   a game developer who that is not coupled to the their platforms.   And and and Bitcoin is the,   like, ultimate way to do that. So   that's what it was that was kind of the inspiration was like, I don't wanna be messed around by anyone anymore. I just wanna do my own thing. And but saying that, I have actually released the games on Apple and   Google, but that's not, like, my ultimate   plan for Thunder Games. That's just kind of like a means to an end to get some traction and get some people interested. Because it's the it's still the easiest way to   to play games, and all the good wallets are on the phones as well. So,   but, yeah, it's basically   the genesis of Thunder Games was kind of me getting   sick of,   like,   be it like all of these   big tech companies.  

I won't go into the details about how I got screwed over. But  

[00:35:35] David Bennett:

Oh, no. That's the I think we we you know, in the space, we've heard enough stories about this from Bitcoin wallets to other services being taken down off of Apple and no reason given.   And it's just, yeah,   it's it's they I kind of feel that big tech has put themselves dug themselves a deep enough hole that they may, you know, be swimming in money.   But I get the feeling that   some of the choices that they've made have put them in a permanent position of   basically   being viewed as the enemy by all the rest of the people that are coming up, you know, saying, I'm not going to do things the way that you do things. And we're seeing more and more open source. We're seeing more and more people give over their time   and energy for not much money because they're just sick. They're just sick of what they see. You know? Yeah. If I was, really wealthy and I didn't have to, like, try and find a way to,  

[00:36:31] Jack Everett:

make money, I would just do open source and just that would be it. I would be anything I could do that would help   remove them from their,   you know, monopolies, I would be on on board with that.  

[00:36:43] David Bennett:

Well, I think I think over, you know, over the course of the rest of our lives, I think both me and you are gonna see a wholesale change in a in a lot of stuff, and and I think it's gonna be a lot more   graphically   violent for for the for these companies than than we think they are. I mean, I could literally see,   you know, something like, you know, a bill you know, hundreds of billions of dollars of market share basically being just blown out overnight.   And I I can't wait to see it happen, but move but but moving on, I wanna ask you about the games that you do have   on Thunder Games. It looks like I'm just seeing two when I go over to thunder.games/games.  

Is that sort of just the Bitcoin bounce and the turbo 84?  

[00:37:29] Jack Everett:

Yeah. Those are the two we've got so far. So they're both like hyper casual games   to make it super they're kind of the the idea is to   make a super easy simple game so the game is really easy to learn and also have a super easy simple way to cash out, which is lightning, which should be as easy to learn as possible. So I didn't wanna make some complicated.   Or firstly, I didn't wanna make a complicated game because I I didn't want people to have to learn too much stuff,   and also making a complicated game is expensive.   So, yeah, we've got these kind of simple hyper casual games, but I think the reception to them has been quite good so far.  

Does you know, it's a blow the bank on a massive   crazy game to prove to to have a success, I think.  

[00:38:19] David Bennett:

So was the creation of both these games, was it sort of also,   not   it seems like it may have not just been   a, you know, I wanna make a casual game. I'd I don't want there to be a high learning curve, but it also seems like there was like, that lends itself into this is how we are onboard people into Bitcoin via the lightning network and making that experience just really cool and having a game   that powers that where you can do something   and collect, you know, Satoshis on the Lightning Network and then be able to cash out.   Is was that in your thought process as well to onboard?  



[00:38:56] Jack Everett:

Yeah. So   that's basically the the the main thread is   monetizing,   onboarding of people to Bitcoin through games.   So   the easiest the easier I can make it to onboard people to,   Bitcoin and the Bitcoin companies, the more money I can make through ads, etcetera. So   my,   incentives align with the Lightning Network in a way because I want some I want,   monetize the game through ads. So I wanna make sure the right ads are going to the right users, and they're gonna try all these cool Lightning products and Bitcoin products.   And also   teaching them to,   you know, use a a Bitcoin wallet, which helps, other Bitcoin wallet companies and also   finding out what the pain points are for the users with the the wallets can help sometimes.  

But then also that means that   the   the user journey in my game, which is ends with them having to download a wallet becomes a sort of monetization   point as well where   I can potentially,   you know, have a recommended wallet or something.   So the business model is actually planned around onboarding people,   which is why the game is simple   and why it's got an advertising model.  

[00:40:13] David Bennett:

That makes sense. So how now   I guess we should kinda pause here to say that turbo 84   has now been released   on the, on the App Store for for Apple. And I know that because I downloaded it.   I'm trying to get my son to play it so he can farm me some satoshis, but he's not having any of it. He's got his he's got his Nintendo Switch, so it's a little difficult right now.   But, surely,   you know, that that, you know, against all   recognizable child labor laws, I want him to farm me some Satoshis.   Yeah. So   how does lightning work? Let let's take turbo 84 for an example. This is a racing game that you kinda the car's going, and it's going rather slow at first, and you're switching lanes to avoid obstacles. And then all of a sudden, things start dropping that you can go pick up. Can you explain how your   what are your thoughts on on lightning in in turbo,   turbo 84?  

What was your thinking? How were you   thinking about   okay. I I know how lightning works.   What can I do to represent that in the game, and how do I get out? Can you kinda go through what your thought process was on that?  

[00:41:28] Jack Everett:

So,   yeah, inter in Turbo 84, there's the iOS version and the Android version, and they're slightly different with the   Lightning,   integrations   because Apple has different rules.   So in   basically,   the concept isn't how do I   put lightning in the game.   It's   how do I use an   monitor,   monetary   or compensation   incentive   to my players to get them to play more.   So I've my goal is to get people to play my games for longer and   and play more and enjoy it more.   So I came here from the angle is how do I put Bitcoin into the game which will increase those metrics,   not necessarily   as a kind of how do I just put it in for being in their sake. You know? I could put Bitcoin in the game,   but Right. It would just people would just collect it. I mean, like, I'll just lose loads of money.  

So I came in from that angle. So on on Android,   we have a lot a daily lottery.   So users collect raffle tickets as they drive along the track.   And when you collect these tickets, each one goes into the lottery. So the more you collect, the more chance you've got for the bigger prizes.   So   that's quite good because,   like, because we can do give away really small small prizes, we can make sure everyone wins. So even if you just get one ticket, you're definitely gonna win, like, 10 sats or something. But, like, the jackpot's, like, 5,000 sets or sometimes it's 500,000   sets.  

So that increases the reengagement   aspect of the game because people come back every day to, you know, do it again. Like, I'll try again today or just get a few sats, or I'll just get a few tickets, see if I can win the jackpot.   So that's the kind of way we've done it in the Android version.   And on our iOS, we weren't allowed to do that because   there there's a rule   saying you can't give users compensation   for tasks.   So, for example, you can't pay them to do surveys or you can't pay them to watch ads or whatever.   So we kind of fell under that,   kind of rule,   which   I don't think there is I don't think we did, but then they kinda changed it because the the reason they gave me wasn't that particular rule. It was like a general   bad business practice rule. So and then they said it was because I was giving money for tasks.  

So so in on the iOS version, the only way you can actually win some Satoshis is, like, randomly on a spinner, like a I don't know if you use the Fold app with their spinner.   Mhmm. Yes. It's the same concept as that one.   So you you can open the game and you can spin the spinner if you come back every day. And you either win some kind of game content, some free game content, or you might win some sats.   And they've accepted that for now.  

[00:44:24] David Bennett:

Yeah. For, yeah, for now. Well, again, I got questions about that here in another section. But, you know, one of the things that I thought was the most interesting about that game is I'm I'm sitting here playing, you know, playing it, you know, kinda testing it out, and I'm like, this is a little bit harder than, you know, harder than I thought. You know, for the and the car is going you know, I'm like, five miles an hour. Why do I suck so bad? But, you know, you know, you get you get better at it. And, you know,   a clean, you know, a clean screen and a, you know, clean fingers actually do help on on that kind of stuff. But, you know, so then I start pick you know, I get to the point where I'm I have gone, you know, gone far enough that I start picking up ticket or not picking up tickets. But I'm picking up, you know, these little, like, I think I can't remember. But they're they're all green, blue tokens.  



[00:45:09] Jack Everett:

Yes. Those. There's the green power ups, which make you go faster, and then there's the blue tokens, which you can spend on, like, new cars and stuff.  

[00:45:18] David Bennett:

Yeah. See, the and that's what I was, like, going, okay. So this is, like, you know, this is good. This is good. And then I finally I finally you know, I can't remember exactly what happened. I've like, I finally got into where I could go to the spinner.   Like, oh, okay. This is like, you know, like you said, it's like the fold app. It it looks familiar.   And I I spin it, and that's like, you've won 10 Satoshis.   And then the little button just collect. I'm like, okay. Hit collect. And it's, like, opens up my blue wallet   because it just happened to be on, you know, on on my iPhone. It sensed that it was there, opens it up and says,   you know,   like, I've got the invoice and then I collect it and all of a sudden I get 10 Satoshis. This this happened within fifteen seconds.  

This is one of the most slick user experiences that I've ever had. Kudos, man. That I mean, because like we said, not only is user experience important,   it's hard to develop, and I think you nailed it on that one. Was that something you were pleasantly surprised with when when you figured out that it was gonna be that smooth? Well, to be honest, I'm not the best at user experience. And,  

[00:46:24] Jack Everett:

I think the reason why it's so good is because it's got good foundation, which is the Lightning Network, and there's not really anything   there's not really any kind of,   divergences that can happen. It's like, it either works or it it doesn't.   Most of the time it works. And,   you know, it's just open like, all all of the all of the stuff that makes the payment happens with the l n URL protocol that I mentioned earlier.   So Right. That encapsulate who it the team of people who have been developing that,   they're kind of like some anonymous people and some known people in the Bitcoin space.   Yeah. They're the ones that deserve the credit for the user experience because they solved the problem. I just, in the game, just literally used it.  

So, yeah, I don't get really deserve any credit.  

[00:47:13] David Bennett:

But see, but that's I'm taking it.   Yeah. No. But I mean but see that that   having   these tools become available, you know, I remember when, you know, Lightning was, you know, it was really hard to, you know, it was really hard to use, and it the experience got better. And but everybody was still harping on the fact   Lightning is going nowhere because of x, y, and z on the user experience. And I'm like,   everybody else that understands what's going on. I'm like,   do you have zero patience?   Yeah. And I don't get that. I'm like,   I remember having to type in full URLs   into Netscape   to get to a website that took fifteen minutes to load because it was it was graphics heavy.  

You know, it had a bunch of pictures on it, like, astronomy.com   at the time or something like that. And I was trying to try I was I remember I was downloading the Hubble Deep Field   photograph of all the galaxies that are way, way, way away. That thing's huge.   And it took fifteen minutes to download.   I didn't cry about it. I didn't what I wasn't saying, you know, the Internet's going to fail because of it. So I don't I don't get the sentiment here where   we see all these things that can, like, the l n URL comes all along, and it's like a game changer.   And yet still are like still people are like, nope. Lightning's gonna fail because of this, this, and this. I don't get it. Do you you got any thoughts on that?  



[00:48:39] Jack Everett:

Yeah.   So whenever I see something like that on Twitter, I I try to I don't wanna be like a Twitter evangelist or anything like that. It's not my kind of style. But if I do see someone say something like that on on my Twitter feed, I do, like,   try and comment and,   so like, correct them. But, yeah, I don't know why people I think it's just some people's personalities like that. They just think, oh, it doesn't work now or never work.   Yeah. But I've no there's there's there's been some issues recently with the high fees that affected some lightning wallets.   Yeah. But that's because they still need to work on the protocol a little bit. Still it is still   kind of a work in progress.  

It's very, very Oh, absolutely.   Being blocked. I mean, I'm getting away with it with, Thunder games. It's almost like,   no. You can use it in a production,   app or game, but there's still some kind of pitfalls.  

[00:49:32] David Bennett:

Yeah. No. And and there will be until,   yet again, some anonymous group of people who are just tired of all the BS that we're that we seem to have been fed over the decades   just solve it because they it just happens again and again and again. Just when you think something is bad, it's like, oh, by the way, we did this   here.   You can use   it. It is the most amazing thing that I've ever seen. But   the one thing I I really wanted to ask, are   I I know this is not gonna be true, but are you running your own lightning node to power this, or   how's  

[00:50:09] Jack Everett:

how are we doing that on the back end? At the moment, I'm using,   a lunar node. So it's I basically   follow about,   like I said, March   2019,   I was like, I was I'll set up my own lightning node so I can test this stuff out. And I think it was it might have been June when I actually finally did it. I can't remember. And, I just followed the tutorial on the b two c pay server   website to set up a Luna node with there was, like, a one click installs be   a Bitcoin full node and a lightning node.   So I've been using that   ever since. And I've got some help from, Christian Moss, who is,   one of the founders of Zebedee.  

I think it was before he founded Zebedee, but he helped me,   with b to c pay server a little bit to set it up. And,   so yeah. But I've literally just used that setup   until now. I'm still using that same same node. And but I've recently started using,   the voltage   get voltage.   No. What the full name of the company. So I've got one of those nodes now,   and I'm gonna try that one out because it's a little the b two c pay server one is good, but it   it's probably more for a merchant. I actually just need, like, the raw node in what's happened is I'm not actually using any of the BT pay service so much.   I do use,   I have I do use it for some invoices for when I get an advertiser who wants to advertise in the game. So I might I'll still probably still keep that load, but,   yeah, I'm gonna use the   the the voltage product. It's really cool. And the good thing about using it now I don't wanna chill chill it too much. He doesn't pay me for this, by the way. But the good thing about using it now is because he's just sort of,   starting out, you get, you can get quite good, customer support   because you can go in his telegram and go go in the voltage telegram group and, you know Yeah. Get set up and ask any questions that you think you're too too that you're too scared to ask. Almost you can you can ask in that group.  

So that's why I get value from it because of the customer support.  

[00:52:19] David Bennett:

The the way that this this community is coming together is not just lightning. Like, I was setting up a Sphinx chat. I wanted to set it up on my own on my own Raspberry Pi alongside my node, BTC.   And I found great resources just chatting with the people in their Telegram, and they were really helpful even when I nuked both my config dot JSON file and my app dot JSON file. They were like, we're all laughing at me, and I'm like, oh, damn. I'm such a I'm such a noob when it comes to Linux. I was like, just dumping out of the, of the editor when I was making edits to those files and   not realizing that I wasn't saving. So I went back to config, and it's like this blank sheet, and I'm like, oh, shit.  

It's amazing. So where does Blender games go next? Do you got another game in the pipeline, or are you just kinda chilling out with these two games right now?  

[00:53:10] Jack Everett:

Yeah. So we've got,   we have got two games that we're we're penciling in.   And they shouldn't take too long to make because   we've a lot of the development time with the first two games   was dealing with bots   and   dealing with Bitcoin and   dealing with just everything that comes with making a game. So there was quite a lot of,   work to do on that side. And but now, we've sort of solved quite a lot of our problems that we had originally   and the monetization problems we had,   which was because we had Bitcoin in the game. It was became quite difficult to get advertisers,   Like, Google wouldn't allow it, for example.  

They wouldn't allow their ads. So it was a bit of a problem, but I've found some people now. So   solve some of the kind of business related problems. So, yeah, we've got a couple of games. We're probably gonna make web versions of   the Bitcoin games as well because we can be more creative then because the the rules are too limiting on iOS is like a joke. You can't do anything.   And Android is almost the same.   It's,   yeah, you can't really do anything on Android either apart from basically what I've done, which is this kind   of tickets and,   like, almost like a   loyalty points that reward you a prize. You know? That's that's you can't do esports really,   or anything like that. So  

[00:54:41] David Bennett:

Well, I wanna kinda ask you a couple of questions about mobile development,   because,   you know,   at one point or another, you're always gonna get, you know, exposed   to some computer programming and you've got, you know, developer kits and whatnot like that. But, you know, it's I've I know one guy that has developed for mobile. So I kinda wanted to ask,   if you get a concept for a game and go into deployment of that game,   what do you use to build on? I mean, is there, like I mean, are you guys, like, put like, putting the art assets together   and then,   like I mean, you're not building it on a mobile phone. You're building, I I would assume, a desktop. Is there, like, some kind of mobile emulator or something that you guys use? What what's what's that like?  



[00:55:29] Jack Everett:

Yeah. So I just use,   Unity.   So   you can, in the Unity software,   build a game for   mobile   p, PC, Mac,   web,   and you can within the   editing environment of your game, you can   emulate the screen sizes   of,   you know, like a a mobile phone. So you can make sure it's gonna work properly on that screen size.   Then, if you wanna test it on a phone, you need to export   from Unity to Xcode,   which is,   the iOS   way to build use Xcode or to build iOS   apps.   And then you can build that and run it on your phone and test it.   And then on Android, you can use Android Studio. So you basically go from Unity to Android Studio or Xcode   and then build it in a normal way like you would a normal iOS app.  



[00:56:26] David Bennett:

Or Okay.   Yeah. That was one of the things that I had actually forgotten about using Unity,   was its export functions are   ridiculous.   It it's it's the most amazing thing. Because when it when we first put it on the computers at the lab at Texas Tech libraries,   they you know, you'd be able to deploy it out to Windows or Mac.   You know? You could make a Windows game or you could make a, you know, a Mac game, and that was pretty much kinda it. And then the next   iteration,   that we got,   for the for the laboratory,   there was, like,   two more things that you could go to. I think it was like you could go to   Xbox or PlayStation or something like that. And then the time after that, it was like all horses were lit out of the out of the ring, and it was just running free. There was, like, me and my boss were looking at the list of what you could export to going   there's no way. There's absolutely no way that they made all of these functional, and   they did. It's amazing.  

Yeah. Yeah. It's good.   Well, at what point you know, when when you're doing when when you get to the point well, okay. What's the point at which you are   satisfied   with the game to go ahead and deploy it to, like, the Apple App Store or Google Play or something like? What what has to happen   just in general for you to say it's ready to go?  

[00:57:51] Jack Everett:

Yeah. I mean   so the first game I I made was Bitcoin Bounce. I don't know if you've seen, played that one because it was on a it was on iOS for a while, and then Apple took it down.   Yep.   And   for that one, that was like a proof of concept. So I made, like, the most ridiculously simple   game, which is and the graphics were just cubes, you know. But I made it, like, just look like a blockchain or something.  

[00:58:15] David Bennett:

Yeah. Yeah. I'm looking at a screenshot.  

[00:58:18] Jack Everett:

Yeah. I wasn't too, like, precious about it. It's more like,   does the gameplay work?   Does the cashing out work?   Does it have, like, the key elements of, like, a hyper casual game, which is kind of endless and,   addictive and chat and and challenging.   And then, yeah, I just released it as a beta,   because people   liked it. And I saw they liked it from the stats. Like, they were repeat playing, like, the next day and the next day after that. I just pulled the trigger on it and was like, oh, you know what? I'll just get this out.   And then for Turbo 84,   that one was actually,   we start that one was actually a game I built for Fire Zoo. And   Mhmm. We based we were actually   really into the film Drive,   which is like a got, like, kind of a pink eighties thing to that film.  

And Yeah. So we kind of just wanted to make it look like that ish, like, have that vibe to it.   But normally, like, the the   from what because mobile games are not never gonna look like triple a titles. You don't have to really worry about how they look so much because the ones that get to the top are just the are the chance just the ones who spend the most money on ads.   And it means that because   they're kind of cheaply made,   everyone's   expectations is not very high because the ones the best games are not like, they've spent loads of money on the graphics.   So I don't worry too much about that. I worry more about,   if people are playing it and if,   the if it actually just kinda works.  



[00:59:58] David Bennett:

Okay. So now you've you've you've you've made the decision that, hey. We're gonna cut it loose, and we're gonna send it on.   Let's talk just a little bit about the app approval process.   What the hell is that even like?   I mean, just what's your   like, thinking about how how to do this?   You know, like, all your experience with having to do this,   what's that like? Is it just horrendous, or is it not so bad or what?  

[01:00:26] Jack Everett:

Yeah. I think yeah. Do you know what? I guess it's like over the years, I've got a bit more sen desensitized to it, but   I feel like it is probably one of those things where   it's quite emotional   when you like, I do worry. Like, when I get an email from when I've received an email and my inbox now says from Apple, I do think,   oh my god. I'm like, what's that? What's happened? Like, even if it's just a notice about a terms and conditions change, my heart skips a beat.   Yeah. It's not like they I haven't had too many problems.   But it's kind of the thing that when you've had one problem, you always think the worst now.  

So it is kinda scary, but it's I think it depends on your personality as well. Like, some people are just amazing poker players and have no emotion.   Oh, they probably would be fine.   But if you got if you're helping emotionally, you could   potentially get a bit   like, if you get rejection, I think some people might tell that quite hard. Because the problem is with Apple is   you you get no feedback. So you basically have to spend loads of money,   build something, and then hope that they accept it. And then when they don't and you ask them, like,   oh, what if I change this? What if I do that? They say, we can't give you any advice. You'll have to upload a new build, and we'll we'll check it.  

So it's like, you know, you spend another, like, $2,000   or something doing a a chat like an update to the thing you already done, and then they reject it again. It's like, at what point do you start thinking, oh, I just need to   save a bit of money and   not   relentlessly,   keep iterating, you know, on this concept? Because they just don't give you enough   to work with. But, like, I mean, I've got enough eventually with, Turbo 84   to get that   out. But that I'm a bit disappointed with Turbo 84 because   it is literally just the spinner.   At least with, on on the Android version of the tickets,   at least you're the better you are at the game and the more tickets you get, the more chance you got winning the bigger prize. So it's kind of,   there's a relationship there between the gameplay   and   the winning of prizes,   which,   unfortunately, I can't particularly do in iOS.  



[01:02:41] David Bennett:

Yeah. So it decouples the skill versus,   you know,   yeah, your your ability to get Satoshis. And that, yeah, that blows, but, you know, it's, god, you   know   yeah. And you when you gotta play by their rules, then there's just I mean, because they don't care. They're like, fine. Don't play by the other rules. Bye. And and which brings me to the next question is you've had,   games pulled off of of these platforms.   Do you even get notified,   or do they just get pulled off? Do you get a warning, or do they notify you when they pull it off, or do they just not even care and all of a sudden you notice your game's gone? Oh, no. You do get you do get a email. So with, Bitcoin bounce, what happened was I did an update. So I must have done about 10 updates to Bitcoin bounce, and I put loads of documentation,  

[01:03:31] Jack Everett:

with, like, how the Bitcoin works, explained the how the payments work. And they even wrote back to me in one of my updates saying, does your,   does your game contain a wallet?   How does they get wanted clarification about the cryptocurrency and everything. So, like, went for all of that, and I the app was out, and I did loads of updates. And then I did a an update, which I think just had, like,   I don't know, a new character in it.   And then all of a sudden, that update got rejected because of,   the Bitcoin in it. The Bitcoin prizes started Well, the competition   started, basically,   which had been accepted   before, and I'd I'd given all the paperwork and the, you know, terms and conditions and legal   work that I've done on it. I didn't just randomly do   submit it. I did check that it wasn't illegal.  

And   yeah. So then you get an email saying your recent update has got a problem. It's kind of like a friendly   you know, there's, you've got a message.   It's just so, like, Apple has sent you a message in the resolution center. So you go to the resolution center, and you're like, oh, no. What have they said? And it's like this Yep. It's like little kind of, like, chat room thing where like a thread. And, they just tell you they they basically just tell you the the specific wall you've broken,   and you can reply to them.   And they they can give more clarification, but they don't normally.  

And then they sometimes call you. So on Bitcoin balance, they did call me as well,   and explained to me that I had two weeks to fix the live version. Otherwise, it was gonna get taken down.   So I just took the the live version down myself because,   I was like, I'm not sticking to your deadline. I'm gonna just take it down myself.   Yeah. Yeah. And, then I thought I'll come back with some different   approach because there's there's not just giving away Bitcoin as prizes. There's other angles you can put Bitcoin in the game.   For example, player to player,   trading of assets. So   you could have games that allow users to upload   assets and sell them between each other, and that could be a Bitcoin. You know? There's different things, but, obviously, that's a white that's quite an expensive   thing to implement.  

So, yeah, then I'll just take you just take the I just took the in my case, took the game down. But then once you've got the   rejection status, you just have to keep doing updates until   they accept it. And then once they've accepted it, they just get an email saying your app is ready for sale.  

[01:06:04] David Bennett:

Okay. Okay. That makes sense. Well, you bring up a good point because the transitions into the the the others,   stuff that I wanted to ask you about was, you know, beyond Thunder Games and and, you know,   what your your company, just gaming in general, not even mobile, just   video games in general.   And,   you know, we're I'm I'm getting into the whole where does Bitcoin and lightning,   you know, beyond Thunder games happen in games. And I was thinking about, like like, let's think about,   one of the first things that me and you both had was when we first discovered Bitcoin, the first thing that we did is compare it to the digital tokenage   of any of the games that we had probably been playing or heard of and realized,   yeah, there's gonna be a, like, a a money duplication   bug. Somebody's gonna exploit, which they always do,   and it kinda drives us away. But now now we're here, and we know that this isn't gonna happen. So   it's tie I think it's time for, like, you know, video games to start revisiting   the potential of inserting actual economies into their game. So when we say when I say game economy, what's your first response?  

What's your gut reaction?  

[01:07:12] Jack Everett:

My gut reaction is is probably is probably too hard. And, also,   it's too probably too hard. And, also, money in games has been isn't new.   Like so when I think about Bitcoin and lightning and I look all these products that come out, not just games,   I just replace the word   lightning with money and see if there's anything innovative. You know?   And in games, you can already   have money in them.   So and and and what big games companies do is they don't use that mechanism.   They have their own   virtual currency.   And I guess   the reason is because   well, I think   pretty sure the reason is   that   you want to obscure value from your   users. So if they buy   10,000   gems   for   $5   and you spend those gems on a   on a   hacksaw, and that hacksaw creates you you can use that hacksaw in the game to get,   10 trees,   and then you use the trees to buy something in the game. So then the trees are like the the money you spend.  

You have no idea how much a tree is, so you're more likely to spend loads more of it. That's why they have all these crazy   currencies that you exchange between is to stop you understanding how much you're spending.   It's, so the problem with putting Bitcoin straight in is it's so valuable,   and it has this   idea of it being valuable. You don't wanna spend it. You need to save it, and you wanna collect it. Now if you use it as a normal currency in a game, people are not gonna spend as much on your stuff. It's It's gonna be the complete opposite of what you want to happen.   So   I see it that it can work in a game, but it's like the other side of it. So for stuff you want people to spend on,   you use normal virtual currency, and then the stuff you want people to value, you use the the the Satoshi.  

So that's what I've done in   turbo 84   in in particularly on Android is I want them to value   playing more, collecting tickets, and winning Bitcoin.   And then so that's the thing that's the   they collect and they don't spend. And then I want them to think that the tokens, those,   blue tokens you spoke of earlier,   You use those to spend in the game. So they're valued. There's a lot of people don't care about those, and you can buy those as well with cash. And you just don't have any because you're winning them all the time as well. You don't really have any   foothold in how much you're spending, like, what's one token worth you don't know, and it's worthless. So you just easily spend it. So I think they might I think that's my gut feeling is   it will be in games maybe like that, but   I might be wrong.  

I'm not gonna be able to  

[01:10:08] David Bennett:

You're you're echoing   the same sentiment that's you know, because I've done a lot,   almost all of my first year, I think, my fifth interview   that I because I started, you know, I started doing Bitcoin and just as, like, given the news. But, you know, I really started wanting to talk to people about, you know, about a few different subjects, and gaming is is definitely one of them. And you're not alone. I mean, you're you're echoing the same sentiment that I've heard from Samson Moe,   and some other people,   that have said pretty much the same thing that they're not really up on the direct use of something like lightning directly inside of a game for the very reasons that you're talking about. So what what I see happening is that the game itself   will have like an input transformer and an output transformer. And what I mean by transformer is like, you know, if you're stepping down voltage   in electricity on a like an electrical grid, you got you know, electricity coming in on one side of the transformer, and it induces through a magnetic field electricity into the other pole.  

And so electricity never directly contacts.   It sort of uses,   you know, the magnetic field to induce something else to occur. And what I I kind of think that I see the rail of lightning or Bitcoin going up the side of a game and that it induces the ability for you to have tokens inside that game and then possibly be able to   cash those tokens out through another transformative process that turns it back into Satoshis, but not actually directly in the game.   I think it'll happen   in a few instances, but as to whether or not it works and works well given the regulatory aspects of what we're talking about, I don't know. Yeah. You know? Is this, like, massive massive problem I've considered, obviously. Like, I'm literally,  

[01:11:54] Jack Everett:

like, worked on this problem for a year now,   and, like, I wake up thinking about it, you know, it goes to this diet what I think about every day. And one of the big things that you don't think about when you're just starting, just making a game with Bitcoin in, is that your game is gonna crash a lot. Right? If your game's on mobile as well, there's always crazy, like, Android phones that might   if someone's battery dies, you crash it. Your the phone, you know, you lose your progress. So if you're playing a game like February,   and instead of tokens, they were Satoshis,   and you're playing it for five minutes, and you collected 200 sats,   and the game crashes. Are they person's lost 200 sats? They're gonna be really angry at you.  

Yeah. And I know what people say, oh, you know, you could   make the game not crash or you could,   you know, dynamic, like, send them the sats in real time, but it's like,   that's a lot of work   Mhmm.   To to do that. And, also, it's like   and and but then when you also think about the reasons we just spoke about   with the,   why would you use it anyway problem, it's like   like, there's too too many things that go against it.  

[01:13:06] David Bennett:

Right. Yeah.  

[01:13:08] Jack Everett:

But I I'm completely open to it because people were like a Zebedee. I don't know if you've seen their mint gox project,  

[01:13:14] David Bennett:

which is That's what I was that's where I came in to,   interviewing Desiree Dickerson.  

[01:13:20] Jack Everett:

Yeah. So they've got, Satoshi's in the game.   The their flagship game is like a Mario Kart game where you collect Satoshis as you drive around,   and then, you can throw them at people. So, I mean, it's it's fun concept. I mean, in that game, it does actually work quite well,   because it adds strategy to it because you might wanna just save your satosis instead of throwing them.   And so in that case, it works well because you want the dynamic of something feeling valuable,   and then that becomes part of the gameplay.  

[01:13:53] David Bennett:

Yeah. And you could always do stuff like, you know, if you're, like, you know, the racing game type concept of throwing Satoshis, but you, you know, you continuously, like or, like, you're, like, I don't know, buy power ups and you continuously throw it at your favorite driver. If that driver wins,   you get part of the prize. I could see that. I could almost see something like that happening because God knows degeneracy   and gambling in this space is freaking rampant.   I've seen more more people talk about their poker games and all kinds of gambling stuff, and I'm like, I I'm not a gambler.   I don't get it. And I'm like, how the hell did I hook up with all these people? I don't gamble.  



[01:14:33] Jack Everett:

That's why gaming's a good use case for Bitcoin because   gaming's addictive. Like I said earlier, that was the first thing I got addicted to. And now I guess the second thing I've been addicted to is Bitcoin. So  

[01:14:43] David Bennett:

Yeah. Well, we all get that. Yeah. Okay. It is now it is is,   we're at an hour and almost five minutes, so I wanna make sure that we squeeze the last part in. This is the shill fest part of the, interview.   So shill us your announcements or anything that you wanna particularly   shill, which is completely fine. There's there's no there's no harm in shilling.  

[01:15:06] Jack Everett:

Yeah. So   please, follow my Thunder Games Twitter because   we do random competitions with the games. So,   you can join in with, others like completing challenges.   We've also if you go to the Twitter, there's, links to our Discord   and Telegram groups where I'm pretty active in those every day because, obviously, I'm programming all day, and I keep my eye on the chat to see what everyone's chatting about. So if you wanna learn more about the games and or have any questions, you can reach me   there. Also,   Jack Everett is my my personal Twitter handle if you wanna follow me on that. But, no, I mainly just, retweet Thunder Game stuff   or or the sarcastic comment. So yeah. No no, Bitcoin shit on there.  



[01:15:52] David Bennett:

And Thunder Games is at t h n d r g a m e s, all one word. It's also at Jack Everett,   e v e r I t t, all one word. Correct? Or is there an underscore in there? Nice.  

[01:16:06] Jack Everett:

Perfect. Yep.  

[01:16:08] David Bennett:

Okay. Cool. Well, Jack,   thanks for giving us your time today. I really appreciate it. It was a   kind of an eye opening conversation. I'd I'd no idea about some of this stuff when it comes to to mobile and   some of the pitfalls that you go through. This the spinner and why you have it in the iOS version versus the Google Play is especially kinda eye opening. So for all you guys out there that are thinking about doing mobile app development,   watch out. Pitfalls   are everywhere.   Jack, thank you for your time, and we'll talk to you later. Cheers.   Alright. Before I leave you today, I want to basically leave you with this one.  

Brink   at Bitcoin brink on Twitter and that is b r I n k says,   hello world.   I've heard like I saw   a bunch of this being tweeted around this morning   and looked at this, and this may I don't know. It's   relatively important over here. I think so. It it this was released today at exactly 6AM,   my time, the 11/24/2020.   Says, today, we launched Brink, a totally independent   nonprofit organization to fund and support open source Bitcoin protocol development.   Oh, baby.   Okay.   Apologies for the nonlinks below.   Apparently, they're trying to set links, but Twitter's being weird about blocking,   when you put in a,   like a website. So apparently,   I'm gonna have to click through all these pictures here. But their first one down here   says we'll be giving grants to independent developers so that they can spend 100% of their time improving and strengthening Bitcoin.  

If you're interested in applying, please go to brink.dev/programsgrants.   And it says just as importantly, we'll be investing in future protocol developers through our fellowship program.   Fellows will spend a year learning how to be effective and impactful.   Open source contributors go to brink.dev/programs   hashtag fellowship   to learn more and apply.   Bitcoin's value rests on its security and stability.   Everything we build on top of Bitcoin depends on the base protocol and reference implementations being rock solid.   One critical bug in the protocol or implementation has the potential to crash the entire Bitcoin economy.  

I really wish you wouldn't put it that way.   But you may be right. I mean, one big bug. Okay. We've had bugs before. It didn't crash the Bitcoin economy, but we always need to be on.   That stability of the base layer depends on skilled developers vetting new proposals, reviewing changes, and fixing bugs. Yet there are few developers who have the experience to make impactful contributions,   and the path to become a Bitcoin developer is notoriously difficult.   An aside here, if   I don't know if these people know about Jimmy Song, but Jimmy Song is has produced   many,   many Bitcoin developers over the past few years. And from what I understand,   very competent. Okay? So there is a pipeline for these people to come out into.  

The Brink Fellowship is a program to onboard exceptional candidates   who into Bitcoin protocol developments. Fellows will receive intensive mentoring and training over the course of one year and become impactful and established open source Bitcoin protocol   developers.   We're totally independent. All of our funding will be through supporters and sponsoring organizations. We've applied for five zero one c three charitable status in The United States. If you would like to support them, go to brink.dev/donate.   Alright. We're extremely grateful for our initial sponsors   at j l p p f e f f e r and Wencesocera   is providing funding for our start up cost and ongoing admin.  

We couldn't have got off the ground without their encouragement and support. Thank you.   Our first fellowship position   will be funded by grants from the, HRF. Oh, nice.   And s oh, Square Crypto. So the Human Rights Foundation and Square Crypto are are their first grants. Nice.   Or the people that are gonna fund it. They've provided enough funding to pay the fellow's salary and all associated costs. Thank you for your belief in the value of mentoring and your support of Bitcoin's future. At KrakenFX,   I have provided funding for our first grant. That'll be enough to support an experienced protocol developer to work for a year. The devs we fund will review, test, and fix bugs, improving the security of Bitcoin for all users. You rock KrakenFX.   And thanks to the amazing Gemini,   that's at Gemini.  

We already have funding secured for our second fellowship position.   Applications are now open. If you want to help build the future of money, you should apply today.   Yeah. You probably should. Frank's unique model and independent funding will further decentralized open source protocol development. We're excited to add our contribution   to the work of that Chaincode Labs, Square Crypto, MIT DCI, and Blockstream and many others are building. And they finish off by saying,   we have more announcements coming very soon. Follow us on Twitter or head on over to   brink.dev   for the latest news. Okay. Nice. That's good to know that that we have yet more people getting into the granting and   general funding of Bitcoin development. That's that's good. I think that they should probably hook up with Jimmy Song,   or Jimmy should hook up with with Bitcoin Brink because that seems like a match made in heaven.  

You need people to actually teach you what to do to have, like, some kind of grounding in in   whatever x we're choosing here.   And then if you were to send them off into a fellowship program, it would just solidify   what was learned before.   And then by the time they get out of the fellowship,   they're in a they're in a particularly good place to apply for a grant.   And after a year of that grant can you imagine   how good one of these like let's check it out think about it you go and you sweat it out through Jimmy Song's Bitcoin like programming Bitcoin class and then you get a fellowship at bitcoin brink and then you get a grant from bitcoin brink you're talking about three years   like three like I mean well I mean Jimmy doesn't do a whole year but I mean if you were to actually work on it you know what Jimmy taught you for a year and then you apply for a fellowship and you get it and then you get the grant,   dude, three years   of solid Bitcoin development.  

Yeah. You're probably not gonna be looking for a job for very much longer after that. Probably don't need a grant after that. Probably just get picked up. So   consider that if you're you're wanting to, you know, stop programming   SQL stuff or, you know, web page front end crap or, you know, your local library   and want to do something that that is more   challenging. I can't imagine anything more challenging than this plus   what you do   the time that you spend   helps Bitcoin   and that helps humanity.   It it really does. It really does. With that said, I'll see you on the other side.   This has been Bitcoin and and I'm your host David Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and hope to see you again real soon.  

Have  

[01:23:45] Jack Everett:

a   great   day.