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FUTR.tv Podcast
The Atlas Tycoon, Building Location Based Mobile Games That Pay The Player
Hey everybody, this is Chris Brandt, Welcome to another FUTR podcast.
Today we are talking with Beau Button, CTO of Atlas Reality. Atlas Reality is the creator of Atlas Empire and the new Location based game Atlas Earth, where you can buy virtual reality, just by walking around the real-world. Much like Pokeman Go This game is a combination of virtual and real-world where you can build out a virtual real-estate empire and earn rent that can be transferred into real-world currency.
Welcome Beau
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What you treasure and I'm never gonna give it up.
Chris Brandt:Hey everybody, this is Chris Brandt here with another future podcast. Today we're talking with Beau Button, CTO of Atlas Reality. Atlas Reality is the creator of Atlas Empire and the new location based game Atlas Earth where you can buy virtual property just by walking around the real world. Much like Pokemon Go, this game is a combination of virtual and real world where you can build out a virtual real estate empire and earn rent that can be transferred into real world currency. So let's talk to Beau about what's all about and how it works. Welcome Bo.
Beau Button:Thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to it.
Chris Brandt:Bo, thanks so much for coming on. Um, Tell me a little bit about what Atlas Reality is,
Beau Button:yeah, Atlas Reality. I mean this, this, this company is in its second incarnation. It's the same team. Uh, we rebranded, we started off as Cerberus Interactive. Uh, initially we were a software development consultancy or an independent game development company in Austin, Texas. And we pivoted. And our core competency is location-based games, right? So we build games that, you know, use modern day mapping technology like Google Maps, et cetera. And, uh, we basically gamify that experience where you have to walk around and interact with the real world to, you know, collect things and, and, and do anything. But, uh,
Chris Brandt:What was the inspiration to create something like this. How did you get into sort of these location-based games?
Beau Button:Oh, yeah. There's no denying it, it was Pokemon Go, so Niantic 100%. Um, in a past life I spent about 10 years in the distressed real estate industry on the software side, building software for governments, uh, helping them liquidate distressed real estate. Okay. So I had a lot of experience with mapping. But, uh, yeah, Pokemon Go kind of piqued my interest. I was like, well, how, what are these people doing outside, walking around? And, uh, this is right around the time that we were trying to pivot from building games for other people and building our own internal IP and, uh, that's, that's how it happened. It wasn't really anything amazing. It was just like, hell, other people are doing it. Let's try it.
Chris Brandt:First of all, I mean, just game development's an interesting, you know, space to be and, and you're, you're kind of doing it mobile game development, which is really interesting. And I, I think one thing that people don't really understand is how big the gaming market is. You know, I, because we, you know, we, we, um, We get so excited about movies and you know, like the Marvel franchise, but when you look at video game franchises, they're orders of magnitude larger and more lucrative than are the, is the movie industry even. You know, that's gotta be a nice place to be, huh?
Beau Button:Uh, it can be, I forget the exact statistic, but if you were to Google how many new games are introduced to Google Play in the Apple App Store on a daily basis? Um, you have to be kind of crazy to get in on it because there's just so many. Yeah. So extremely competitive. Um, a a lot of companies in the Asias, uh, they're, they're pumping out hundreds of games a year. Yeah. And, and they're not high quality. A lot of 'em are, you know, basically copycats. Yeah. But, um, yeah, it's, it, it's, there's a lot of money to be made, but you do, there's, there's a lot of lessons that you'll learn very the hard way, honestly. Uh, that's why we've been in business for seven years and we're still learning, but. Yeah. I mean, we got into this because we know it's a very large cap. It's, it's a very large potential market.
Chris Brandt:It's like kind of like YouTube. It's a big market, but very competitive. Right.
Beau Button:Extremely. Yeah. I, I would argue it's probably easier maybe not to become a social media influencer or a celebrity on YouTube than it is to achieve any financial success in the gaming industry. Um, I, I'd have to do a little bit more homework, but it feels the same. It's like not everybody with a webcam can become, you know, ninja or PewDiePie or something like that, but, uh, it, it, it can be daunting.
Chris Brandt:Well, I, I think there's a convergence there cuz you know, a lot of these Twitch streamers who are making all the money, they're playing video games anyways, right.
Beau Button:My, my 15 year old son, actually he's 16 now. Uh, I don't know if he aspires to be one of those, but he's mentioned, you know, that there are people making money doing this and I'm like, Yeah, that's more difficult than becoming an NFL star. Like statistically, it's just not something you should bank on, but whatever. Bless his heart.
Chris Brandt:Yeah. My son keeps, uh, you know, talking about, hey, he wants to be on the eSports team at, at, and when he gets to high school.
Beau Button:The fact that that exists is, is, is impressive. Uh, I'm happy to see, you know, Education like the, the high schools and the colleges kind of embrace that because times are changing and it is, it is a real opportunity. There are some very talented video game, you know, players. But, um, I just, I've got like between my four sisters, I think 26 nieces and nephews, and I think half of 'em think that's what they're gonna do. And I'm like, that's not good. That's not good at all.
Chris Brandt:If you look at like the YouTube market and the Twitch streaming market, I mean, so much of that is related to GA game content. You have to think that, you know, like all the media properties have to find that interesting because they're like, you know, YouTube's stealing all that potential revenue from 'em right now. Right.
Beau Button:I mean, I'd like to see the, the, the, the, the play and field leveled a little bit. Like you've got these outliers that are making hundreds of millions, you know, tens of millions of dollars. But if there's an opportunity for, you know, individuals on their own, through their own Twitch streams to monetize them and make basic income, then I would support it. But I just, right now I just, it's still hard for me. I'm not that old, but like, it's just hard for me growing up. Like I was into writing software. I didn't really build games. I didn't play games as a child, but, It just, it's kind of confusing to think that somebody could sit at home behind a computer screen and just play games and make enough money to support themselves. I mean, it sounds great and maybe that's what it's gonna be, but it just, my brain hasn't wrapped its head around it quite yet. Yeah,
Chris Brandt:I, I'm, uh, I'm, uh, constantly fascinated by that dynamic cuz it just, Like you, it doesn't make sense to me either. Yeah. One of the things that, when we were talking before is sort of the social causes, you know, kind of behind your company. Could you, could you speak a little bit to, to that aspect of it?
Beau Button:Yeah. This is something that's kind of in the DNA of of the company. My partner Sami and I, when we started this, you know, we. We were a consultancy, so there wasn't a whole lot of opportunities for us to, uh, you know, outside of like charitable contributions. Like if we're building games for other people, like what's the, the dovetail into like a, a social cause, right? But when we started to grow and, you know, actually have revenue, we, we were trying to figure out ways for us to, to give back. Um, uh, the word greed gets thrown around in internal conversations. People want to know like, How does this business model work? Um, the first thing that you have to kind of embrace is just don't be greedy. Um, so like the, the, the, the Atlas Earth concept, the virtual rent. You know, people think of it, if you look at the reviews, I'd say a third of them are like, it's a scam. It's a Ponzi scheme. You're taking $5 from this land sale to give $5 to that person for virtual rent. But, uh, you know, Sami and I were committed to building a sustainable business that allowed people to earn some type of cash back reward. Um, you know, on the internet, they're calling it passive income. We can't call it an investment. There's no return, right? It's, it is something that you can, you know, deposit into your checking account, but it's, it's more of a cash back. But the social good here is trying to build, uh, an enjoyable experience. Uh, on top of a sustainable business model that allows players of our game in the Atlas Earth platform to basically make some money. Um, the dream here would be for them to make enough money to, to pay a bill or two, not just to get a cup of coffee. Um, and, and we're well on our way to being able to do that. Um, the average cash out right now is about eight bucks a month. Um, which there aren't many games that can claim that they're cashing out to players $8 a month. Um, but that's not gonna change your life. It's certainly not gonna cover your, your tank of gas. Well, I, I, I,
Chris Brandt:I drive an electric car, so, um, you know, maybe I'll cha take one. One. Well, you might be able to charge it. One charge. One charge, right. One of the other things that I find really interesting, cause I've, I've been playing it lately and, and, and one, one thing that kind of really fascinated me is just like a block over. There's another, uh, I got a neighbor who's, who's, you know, fairly well established in the game, um, and has a lot more, uh, uh, Atlas bucks than I do at this point. But, yeah. But, but you know, I, I, as you can tell by sort of my pasty exper ex exterior here, um, I spend a lot of time in a basement in, in front of fake, you know, daylight. And I don't get outside much.
Beau Button:Yeah. I'm the same way. Don't worry. Yeah, I'm the same way.
Chris Brandt:But the thing that's interesting about this is like, it's a good excuse to like, either go walk the dog or you know, get up and go to a cafe and work there a little bit. You know, cuz like, one of the things that I think is really important for, for mental health is sort of getting out and getting a little physical activity during the day. You know, changing your, what you're looking at and, and, and, and doing that and, and you know, like now I can go and, you know, hunt a few diamonds on my, uh, My, my walk and, and you know, like maybe, uh, build my, my virtual reality real estate empire here.
Beau Button:It's hard to change habits of behaviors, existing behaviors, so you're absolutely right. I'm, I'm certain we've convinced some players to get off their butt, go outside and walk to collect that diamond that's just outside of the playable radius while they're sitting on their sofa watching a Netflix series. We're not doing as much as we can to promote that. It's, it's definitely something that we are focusing on. Um, Pokemon Go integrated your step counter. So there was an incentive to walk. Now people abuse that system. They were sticking their phones on top of their washing machines and doing whatever else they could do to simulate, you know, A pedometer or to stimulate the pedometer, but yeah, no, you're absolutely right. But we, we learned, uh, from Atlas Empires our first game, uh, focus on what players are already doing. So we, we have a lot of people that, you know, if they use public, uh, transportation, if they're on a bus or if they're, you know, a passenger in a car. We see a lot of players, a lot of players taking advantage of that. But we are working on what we're called, we're calling 'em scavenger hunts. These are gonna be, you know, less about just going out and like haphazardly collecting diamonds. They're gonna be intentional missions that integrate merchants and points of interest where it's gonna be in your best interest because the, the reward's gonna be atlas bucks. And that's the whole motivation here is you get diamonds so you can spin the wheels so you can win atlas bucks. With our partnerships with merchants, we're gonna be building out more. I think engaging experiences that leverage the map, which is going to convince more people that they need to go walk at the park because some of these experiences may only exist at parks or exist in green spaces, so there's a lot we can do. We're not doing the greatest job at it right now, but the fact that you can go out and walk, I mean, that's fantastic, but. Yeah, we're leaving a little bit, actually a lot on the table right now.
Chris Brandt:Well, yeah, I mean I do see a lot of, you know, coming soon, coming soon, you know, like on, on a lot of this stuff. But, but I think it's interesting cuz like, you know, there's, you do have a real interesting opportunity here to gamify better habits, you know, whether it's like, you know, maybe there's a y you know, like meditation piece that you get some, some extra points for meditating.
Beau Button:We're, we're evaluating options that allow us to make a little money so we can share that with the player base outside of ads. Um, despite the fact that I'm a co-founder and a shareholder in this company who is largely based its business off of ad revenue, I hate advertisements. Mm-hmm. Um, my local network in the house is locked down. So there's not an ad being displayed on any mobile device anywhere. Um, so we're, we're trying to figure out, so like the meditation play, the pedometer play, you know, anything that we can do and partner with, you know, if it's a local tourism board or something like that to, to drive people because it is location based. We have a lot of opportunities that are unique to lo location based games because, We can drive people to real places on the map. Yeah. I'm excited to see what comes up, but I actually, I like your meditation idea. I mean, there's companies out there that sell these meditation apps, so maybe there's a dovetail into something like that. So I'll think about it.
Chris Brandt:Well, you know, and there's also, you could also incentivize like taking public transportation and things like that. Absolutely. There's another, uh, um, app company that we interviewed a while back called Canvs, and what they're doing is they're chronicling all sorts of street murals around the world. Oh, very cool. So you could have like, you know, you could incentivize people to go and look at Art on the street and, you know, maybe that's a good, uh, collaboration you guys could do there. I could put you in touch.
Beau Button:I'd love for us to be the platform. Again, the goal is for players to earn cash. So, you know, back in the day, four square was all the rage. If you wanted to go eat somewhere, you would check in, you would be rewarded for check-ins. You know, we, we have some. Desires to be similar to that, but um, anything that is location based, you know, despite if it shows a map or not, would be an ideal partner for us because we could surface their content on our platform or in our platform. So, yeah, it's something that we have to think long and hard about. But going back to the coming soon thing, we've had to focus a lot of energy on things that we didn't expect to focus energy on. So it wasn't intentional. But yeah, coming soon was intended to be three months, but it's been about seven to eight months. Um, we're, we're, we're getting better at that by the end of the year. You shouldn't see any more coming soon stuff.
Chris Brandt:Well, I, I mean, it does look like interesting stuff. I mean, like, the scavenger hunts sound really interesting and I, I could really see too where, um, you know, you, you with, with some of the partnerships that you have, some of the brand opportunities, you know, like giving discounts to go to just like local shops, you know, that, that, that you could be part of that whole shop local movement too.
Beau Button:No, that, that is very close to my heart. Yeah. Um, there's no denying that, you know, Amazon has decimated a lot of big businesses, but many, many more small businesses. The convenience, like I'm in Austin, Texas, I can get things shipped same day, two hour delivery from the, it's, it's absolutely mind blowing. I'm guilty of leveraging it because sometimes I don't really have the time to go drive, but, Anything that we as a company can do to help the brick and mortar mom and pop, you know, non-franchise businesses, if it's boutiques or restaurants. Um, I'm absolutely interested in this dystopian promise that we're all gonna exist in this virtual world where in virtual reality headsets, like Ready Player me, um, or Ready Player One, forgive me. Ready Player Mes an avatar company. Um, I don't subscribe to that. I don't, I. It may happen, but I'm not going to contribute to it. I think what we're doing here, and, and this is kind of how we've articulated, is creating this virtuous cycle between the real world and the virtual world so they can be symbiotic. So you play a game and it promotes, you go and shop and locally that local merchant wins. We win, everybody wins. But you're getting out, there's, there's a mental health aspect that just. I don't wanna live virtually. Trust me, I don't.
Chris Brandt:Well, I, you know, I find your Metaverse app very tangible.
Beau Button:The, the word metaverse is still, it's confusing, but, um, that's, that's kind of the category that we're being, you know, thrown into here. But I'm, I'm excited about our opportunity because we are not abandoning the real world. We're not abandoning the, the brick and mortar merchants. These are hardworking folks. Um, and as you've seen with our merchant platform, we've got some nationwide brands, Burger King, Jamba Juice, Auntie Anne's, um, we had to fight long and hard to get those, but, um, it's, it's one of our most promising revenue sources right now because players mostly Burger King. Um, we're moving the needle pretty, pretty, pretty far for, for Burger King, but players will spend. It's unfortunate, but A, a Big Mac, not a Big Mac, a Whoppers, what, $12 Now? It's not, you know, $4 like it used to be, but we had a family of four. The, the, the, the dad's on Discord saying he spent $75 at Burger King and he got, you know, a hundred and something Atlas bucks. I'm like, that's pretty incredible. Yeah, that's not bad. There's kind of two, two camps, you know, and, and I think this is largely true for, for most games, you, you, well, not most games like Call of Duty, you're playing it because you like first person shooters and you wanna shoot people. You're on a team, right. In, in our world, we find ourselves, we, we have the folks with disposable income who are in the game for clout. Just like the blue check on Twitter. You pay for it. What does it really bring to the table? Nothing other than maybe satisfaction for yourself. You know, there's a sense of legitimacy, but if, if you play our game, the virtual real estate aspect, If, if, if you own the most land in the country, you become the president and everybody who opens the game sees that you're the president if they're in that country. If you own the most amount of land in the state, you're the governor. If you own the most amount of land in the city, you're the mayor and everybody who opens the game in any one of those jurisdictions sees your profile picture and your username. So that's camp one. These are people who are, you know, more often than not labeled whales. They're pumping real money. I mean, our president in the game has spent tens of thousands of dollars. Now he's a YouTube celebrity who's known for unboxing cards Magic, the Gathering cards. His name is Open Boosters, so of course he's getting ad revenue from YouTube. So I'm not saying it's not hard earned money, but it's money that he doesn't cry about, you know, parting ways with, yeah. And then on the other side, And this is really, I don't want to alienate any side of the, you know, the, the, the player base here, but like the side that I want to help the most are the people who are genuinely trying to earn some extra cash, right? And if that's a dollar, $5, $10,$20, um, these folks are in the game kind of playing the game like it was intended to be played. We give you one free piece of land and then we give you opportunities to earn free Atlas books. You can watch ads, or you can go spend money at a participating merchant. And again, going back to not changing behaviors. If you're already buying food from Burger King or shopping or buying food from Popeye's or Jamba Juice. You're gonna just get rewarded Atlas books that you can then use to buy land. Now the land is what generates the rent. So the more land you have, the more rent per second you actually generate. So yeah, I mean that's the core mechanic there. Is that second, you know, kind of, you know, camp there is that, that's what we see the most of. But there's two camps for sure, because there's people that are just dropping money, trying to beat people, and we're gonna. Promote that and we're gonna, you know, allow that. But that, that second camp is where we're focusing a lot of our energy.
Chris Brandt:Well, and I just wanna also point out to people just to clarify too, is like that real estate you're buying in game is actually tied to the real world location of that real estate.
Beau Button:Yes. There is one thing that's important to know and, and, and I, I. I'm confused why I have to describe or explain this to some people. You know, when you think about buying, you know, real property, you know, on the open market you've got a location that you can build on. You know, the, the, the expression, location, location, location, where that property is, is important. Same thing kind of exists in our world. We're not. Taking advantage of that, or there's really no mechanics that, you know, uh, allude to the fact that the location in the future is gonna be important, but like, what's the natural evolution of virtual real estate? Well, you should be able to build buildings on that, and we should be able to, you know, have commerce exchange and sell, you know, goods, et cetera. But, uh, Even though it's anchored by the real world, if you buy the land in Atlas Earth, you have no claim to the land in reality. Um, somebody asked me, I was just like, how, how on earth? I mean, I, look, I would love nothing more for our platform to be the interface for REITs. You know, these virtual, uh, these real, real estate kind of instruments, investor instruments, we're not there yet, but. You don't own your neighbor's house. Even if you own their your neighbor's house in Atlas Earth, don't go over there and try to evict them. Trust me, it won't end well.
Chris Brandt:Oh, you know, there was a nice house down the street where I built my, uh, empire and so, uh, you know, maybe I should, um, start moving my stuff back out.
Beau Button:That is one of the unintentional game loops. Like we didn't set out to have these competitions, but when you find a group of people who are playing together, They're either buying where they work, where they live, or where you work and where you live. Because when you open the game, you see their avatar and it, it's, it's upsetting. So there's a lot of competition. So again, it wasn't a loop that we kind of built into the game, but it's, it's unfolded organically. And it's funny because we see a lot of people getting really mad. There'll be one guy who will buy four pieces of land, and then there's that, there's always that one guy that goes and buys the surrounding nine pieces of land to, to gridlock him, and it's like, what are you gonna do? What are you gonna do about it?
Chris Brandt:Well, I guess it's like, it's like monopoly. I mean, the, the strategy of Monopoly is buy every single piece of property you can get your hands on until you're broke.
Beau Button:That's exactly right. I mean at, at one point we, we thought of this as kind of the modern day, location based monopoly. There's not enough similarities, but yeah, I'd love to add things that allow, you know, us to, to have a more monopoly like experience. But right now there's just so many things going on that we didn't plan for, that are players are doing. Um, it's great cuz we're selling land and we're a business, we're a for-profit business and obviously we're paying people to play the game. So if we're not making money, that becomes difficult.
Chris Brandt:Well, I'm gonna go buy the railroad, uh, after this call. I'm gonna need, I'm gonna need a few more Atlas bucks. But
Beau Button:go buy a whopper. I mean, I'm just surprised that Whoppers are like $14. It's embarrassing.
Chris Brandt:You know what I do like, I, I will say like the impossible whopper that that Burger King came up with. My daughter. Like that's, she's like, I want an Impossible Whopper.
Beau Button:Yeah. I don't know if you read my bio, but, uh, I'm an impossible and a Beyond Meat fanatic. Now you shouldn't eat 'em for every meal, much like you shouldn't eat red meat for every meal. Absolutely. Um, a a, a whole food plant-based diet is the way to go, but when I'm in the mood for a burger and I'm on the run, A flame broiled impossible whopper with pickles. Like for me, it, it's not a burger. If there's not dill pickles, it hits the spot. They've done a great job, so it's, that's great that your daughter's embracing that. But I get a lot of flack. I don't, I'm, I've been vegan for almost five years, so it's unusual. When someone brings up impossible meat products, but, uh, that's cool that your daughter's embracing it.
Chris Brandt:Yeah. I haven't eaten meat in 30 years probably, so I, I'm, I'm on that train as well. Well, fantastic. Yeah, I, I, I'm a big fan of that new subject.
Beau Button:Yeah, absolutely. And look, I was in Costa Rica and Burger King and Costa Rica had the impossible nuggets. Ooh. And, and Chris. I grew up eating nuggets. I don't know if everybody did. We were broke, like poor pork, and if I got a happy meal with sweet and sour sauce from McDonald's, it was a good week. Heaven not eaten real chicken. You know, you can get simulated nuggets. There's like 50 different brands now, but they don't really hit like those McDonald nuggets. These nuggets in Costa Rica at the Burger King that were plant-based. I cried. A grown man sitting there, and I'm just like, I hope to God, honestly, they don't come to the Burger Kings in the States because I'm trying to like slim down and that will be the death of me.
Chris Brandt:I, I love the idea of you weeping in a, you know, a Burger King in, in Costa Rica.
Beau Button:Honestly, I would go back just to eat at that Burger King. Sorry if anybody's in Costa Rica. You guys have brilliant cuisine. I don't wanna, uh, short change Costa Rica.
Chris Brandt:It, it's a, it's a great country with a lot of great cuisine and apparently the best Burger Kings in anywhere in the world.
Beau Button:Definitely the best Burger King experience on earth.
Chris Brandt:Let's talk a little bit about Atlas Reality, cuz you, you have more than just, um, Than just Atlas Earth. You have Atlas Empire and Atlas. Uh, what, what's the, the, the road racing game?
Beau Button:The original game was Atlas Empires, and then we built Atlas Earth, and then we were kind of thinking about diversifying into the hyper causal space and kind of marrying the location and hyper causal. And it was gonna be its own independent product called Atlas Racer. It's a drag racing game. We had kind of started working on it. We had a prototype, but what we realized was because of the success of Atlas Earth, and quite frankly the, the limited game-like experience, like there's not a whole lot you can do in Atlas Earth if you're buying land, if you're in it for passive income, like what's keeping you coming back? Well, what's keeping you coming back is you're watching an ad to boost your rent. Um, and that's not overly exciting. We, we, we see a lot of people doing that, so, We decided to absorb Atlas Racer into Atlas Earth, and as of about a week and a half ago, we did a soft launch of Atlas Racers. So it's actually an in-game event that's sponsored. Um, this, uh, last, uh, this last event was, uh, sponsored by Advanced Auto Parts. So it's a drag racing game that's gonna be scheduled when you open the game. You'll see a little car on the map and then you can drag race. And of course if you win, uh, it's like a a 24 hour event if you're in the top 5,000 players. The prize pool gets dispersed so you can win Atlas bucks again, just allowing you to win Atlas bucks. So, yeah,
Chris Brandt:that's very cool. That's very cool. You gotta, you gotta do a sailing competition one too.
Beau Button:We, well, we've got a golf win in the works and we have a fishing game. Again, these are hyper casual. You get in, you get out within 45 to 60, 60 seconds.
Chris Brandt:Well, you know, I, I have played this, um, virtual Regatta game cuz we're, we're into sailing over here. Um, and so, like one of the ones that's really interesting is there's this, this big race that comes out of France called the Vendee Globe. And it's a single-handed race around the world and it goes through the roaring forties, so like the lower, you know, forties, the, the, the South Seas. They're unimpeded by land masses. So some of the waves are generally about 60 feet the whole time. Oh God. And then you're fighting, you're trying to not hit, hit icebergs, but the race takes like three months. It would be really interesting to get out into, you know, like, like the follow the race and have like a, a virtual event in Atlas Earth where you were picking up. You know, uh, diamonds and stuff on, on, on different port parts of the, the course
Beau Button:I'm interested in any ideas you have for casual or hyper causal mini games Because I don't play games despite me having this massive collection of like analog old school arcades. I do not have the attentions man for playing them. But I think sailing it. I'm not a sailor, I'm a powerboat user. I don't have the attentions fan to sit out there and learn how to do it. But I have been jealous of people that talk about going on weeks long sailing trips and docking and having a great time. So I'll have to do some research and see if there's anything we can do that sounds fun.
Chris Brandt:Having more incentive in game, that would be fun. Earning money, earning bucks, and then, you know, like you could, yeah. Take that to Burger King. Get your, your impossible nuggets.
Beau Button:Yeah, the only sailing event I've ever seen in person was in the San Francisco Bay, and Oracle had one of their catamarans, I guess they're called. It's like these twin hull, the two. It's a pontoon catamaran. I did not realize that sailboats went that fast, right? Like as a child, I thought sailing was slow, leisurely, and just boring. This thing looked like it was jet powered and it was outta the water. I'm like, that's fun. I need to go to one of those events and actually pay attention,
Chris Brandt:you know, last America's cup and, and actually the Vendee Globe, they do this too. They, they have foiler boats, so when they get up to a certain speed, they lift outta the water. Yeah, yeah. It's, it's, it's super cool.
Beau Button:Right now. The game lacks, you know, depth. We are paying people to date. We, we've paid up, I think over $350,000 in cash to place. Um, that's no small amount of change. Um, the business is profitable, obviously. We've got, uh, behind the scenes we manage our own treasury. So we invest the revenue, a portion of the revenue, not all of it. Obviously, everybody has to get paid. Um, But we've built a sustainable business, but we are absolutely looking for other opportunities where we can drive a business to brick and mortars and entertain people. We don't want people just coming back into the game just to watch ads. So having these really quick, hyper causal games, sailing could be one of them. Dirt bike racing, cuz I'm a big excite bike fan, et cetera. But I think in the next six to 12 months, we'll see a dozen or so hyper causal games integrated into Atlas Earth. And who knows, maybe it'll become like the next. Yahoo Games where you come in and that's where you start playing your games. But the rewards are Atlas bucks that allow you to buy land, which allows you to generate rent, which you can cash out.
Chris Brandt:Well, that is literally the promise of the Metaverse, so congratulations. You're the f, you're the first company to actually achieve it.
Beau Button:I'd like to think that we'll be the first ones to allow people to earn a meaningful amount of money. That's not based on speculation alone. Our competitors that are on, you know, the blockchain web three genre, you're buying real estate and you're speculating that it's going to increase in value because you're next to Snoop Dogg or you're next to Atari. And I'm not saying it's not gonna happen, it will. But the, the appetite that, that's much smaller than the appetite for, I'm playing a game that doesn't cost me a dime. I don't have to, I'm not forced to buy a piece of land and I can just watch a few ads to, to fund it. You know, if you don't have any disposable income, no problem. You can come in here completely free to play and ultimately make money.
Chris Brandt:Obviously, this is not just for. Uh, real estate agents who, who, who would you say is your, your target demographic? Who, who would you say like, this is, this game is built for you?
Beau Button:It's not, it's not sexy, but these are disenfranchised, uh, you know, Americans that, um, they're, they're, they're living the hard life. Uh, I manage the Discord and Reddit community. Um, I've, I've done probably 60 like video interviews with our players to kind of ask 'em questions more so about like, What do you think about our game? Not being on the blockchain, but I learned a lot about our players and, you know, this wasn't the audience that we thought. I mean, you can cut if you're making a game where people can make money. All right. And, and it, it's a grind. It's a grind. I mean, we have a lot of people on the internet that just like, why don't you get a real job if you're playing this game for five hours a day? Why don't you just go get a full-time job at Walmart? And then there's legitimate situations where these people just can't go and get a real job. But, um, I, I think a large percent of our player base, quite frankly, are, are struggling. Um, and they have access to a mobile phone in the internet and time. Um, I'd love to figure out why they have so much time, and maybe it's education, maybe it's not. I have a lot of family that live in Alabama, Mississippi, so I, I have a good idea of how this happened, but, uh, a lot of our players are struggling, uh, and, and they're not struggling because of Atlas Earth, and I'd like to think that we're, we're kind of helping them, but we can do a better job. I have no doubt about it. But yeah, I mean, that's, From what I've seen firsthand, these are struggling Americans that need extra cash. Well, you know,
Chris Brandt:maybe one of the things you should, you could integrate is, uh, a, a way to donate your Atlas bucks to a fund that, you know, helps people out that could go to some sort of charitable thing.
Beau Button:No, absolutely. There's definitely some charitable things that we wanna do. Um, it's gonna sound like a pie in the sky idea, but my partner, he threw this at me about nine months ago and he was like, look, if, if our treasury grows large enough where we have enough money from our investments, our internal corporate investments to fund some type of U B I or healthcare for people who own a certain amount of land. Why not do it? And I'm like, why not do it? Yeah. Like, that's the thing. It's, it's, Sammy and I are very, you know, very, uh, what's the, the word I'm looking for, you know, selfless, you know? Yeah. I, I'm in it to make money, but Sammy and I, we've, we've had other businesses we've exited, um, and, and we're genuinely committed to trying to build something that is, uh, Go into to enrich people. Um, again, it is for profit. This is not goodwill. There's a lot of goodwill, but at the end of the day, we have to pay people, but we don't have to take a hundred percent of the pie. If we take 50% of the pie, 60% of the pie and distribute the rest of that, we could do some pretty amazing things. Like if Facebook took 40% of their profit and said, you know what, we're gonna do something meaningful with it. I think you could change a lot of lives. A lot of lives.
Chris Brandt:Well, you could end homelessness in America for sure.
Beau Button:I have no doubt. And look, that's the fact that that's true. And Zuckerberg is posting videos of his juujitsu Competition on the internet gives me absolute indigestion. I don't, it's not, I'm not upset. He is his own person, but I'm not, I'm not cut from the same fabric.
Chris Brandt:I, I am not a huge fan of Facebook. I will say,
Beau Button:Despite the fact that we run ads on Facebook, please, if you're a Facebook representative, don't do anything malicious against us. I love you to the, just enough so we can run ads on, right, right.
Chris Brandt:Well, so, so what's, where's, where's this all go next? What's the next big thing for you guys?
Beau Button:So the next big thing for us outside of the mini games is trying to, Move towards a point in time where Atlas Earth is less a game and more a FinTech product. Mm. We're a game. It's not an investment. There's no guarantees, there's no insurance. FDIC notice. Right. Um, one of the things that our, our players should see within, hopefully by q4. Is a debit card product, so we're going to allow players to basically obtain a debit card. It's gonna be tied to a neobank, which is what most, you know, modern mobile app based, you know, checking products or debit card products use. But you're gonna be rewarded for every purchase at any merchant. So if you go spend money at your grocery store, you know the margins on a debit card. So obviously the credit card network charges a fee. The merchant, you know, charges a fee, et cetera. But there's money to be made, but it's not enough. Normally to actually give cash back, but it is enough to give virtual, you know, a Atlas Bucks back. So again, we're, we're trying to move in that direction where we're not just relying on a handful of merchants that we have to fight tooth and cone to get deals with. Open it up so anybody can put a couple dollars, a hundred dollars. If you've got a paycheck and you're going to buy groceries and you're playing Atlas Earth, if you're watching ads, We're gonna try to sweeten the pot so you can use your Atlas Earth actual debit card to be rewarded in ab, which then you can use to buy land. So again, trying to just make it easier for people to earn Atlas bucks. The key is you need to earn, you need to earn Atlas bucks to buy land, or you can buy the Atlas bucks, but that kind of defeats the purpose here. We have a lot of people that buy Atlas bucks, but we're trying to offer more opportunities for players to earn Atlas bucks without having to spend hard-earned money on things that they wouldn't otherwise have already needed, like gas and you know, groceries.
Chris Brandt:Hopefully that that vision becomes a reality. Cause I think that sounds really awesome. And I, and obviously, you know, some sort of, you know, universal basic income from wherever it comes from is a great,
Beau Button:people always ask me like, what, what do I define myself as, as being successful? I don't, I mean, financially I've made money, I've lost money, I've gone through divorces. Like it is what it's, uh, but like what? Would make me happy. What I would be proud to put on my, my tombstone is that I contributed to something that was. In the metaverse, again, I hate that term, but like the future version of the internet where people are mixing virtual reality and, you know, real, you know, life experiences, but they're being paid fairly. It's not greed and, and look, part of that healthcare. I grew up without healthcare. I was in New Orleans, Louisiana. We had to go to the clinics. It was a terrible experience. So if I could help fix that. I, I could die a happy man. Wow.
Chris Brandt:That's that's awesome, man. Well, both thanks so much for coming on. Uh, it's a really fun, interesting game. I, I, I turned my son onto it and then he turned a bunch of his friends on. So you've got a whole bunch of middle schoolers, uh, out there playing, playing it right now. Um,
Beau Button:well look, send me his, uh, his, well send me your address. I'll send him some swag because. Um, I, I like to see again, the, the, the, the platform's not intended for extremely young, but I, at some point, we will start leveraging this as a platform to teach financial literacy. Yeah. Um, there's a lot of people that don't understand. They, they don't have any, Financial kind of intuition, but uh, no, that's, that's good. Just make sure he's using his referral code because we do have a pretty rich referral system where you can earn Atlas bucks if you refer people.
Chris Brandt:I don't think he did do that. So I'll, I'll have to, I'll have to hit him up on that, so, but Awesome man. Sounds good. Thank you so much for coming on and, and good luck with all of it. It's fantastic.
Beau Button:I appreciate you having me on the show, Chris, it was been, it was a pleasure.
Chris Brandt:Thanks for watching. Love to hear from you in the comments. If you wanna find a copy of Atlas Earth that's available in the various app stores for iOS and Android. Thanks for watching, and I will see you in the next one, if not out in the Metaverse.