The Format #012

There’s a phrase we’ve been using a lot internally at OPENFORMAT… ‘everything is a game’. With Microsoft closing their $69 billion Activision deal and Disney looking to pivot into gaming, the news seems to be echoing that sentiment. The business models driving the gaming industry, and gamer culture as a whole, seem to be seeping into every industry and big company.

With that in mind here are some of the more interesting things we’ve found that showcase the power and future of ‘the game’:

OpenAI’s ChatGPT Makes A Game For $1!

Building a game in 7 minutes, with 25 ‘team members’ and less than $1. Beneath the cute avatars and virtual office, this is a really crazy and powerful application of AI. Short term this could lead to virtual twins of real businesses popping up all over. But long term it feels like we could be interfacing with AGI through a ‘game’ rather than the text based UI we are used to.

Meta Has an AI That Can Read Your Mind and Draw Your Thoughts

We’re in an era that is redefining the term intellectual property in every conceivable way, and this might be the next step. Are we heading into a world with a marketplace for dream videos? An influencer thought streaming service? The biggest takeaway: the need for mental privacy… ‘ultimately, while AI can now paint our thoughts, it's up to us to ensure the canvas remains our own’.

Disney's CEO Is Reportedly Being Urged to Consider Turning Company Into a 'Gaming Giant'

Following the less than popular releases of Indy 5 (featuring a much older Harrison Ford…) and Haunted Mansion, is it time for Disney to diversify? Historically, when it comes to games they have mainly licensed out their IP, but with the gaming industry continuing to expand, maybe the time for a major Iger-led pivot is now?

X social media to test $1 annual subscription for basic features

Whether this works or not, it’s great to see a company (or in this case an Elon) experimenting with different business models in a sector that has accepted the norms of how to operate for far too long.

Just One Game on Solana Is Doing More Daily Transactions Than All of Polygon

It’s fair to say that to date Web3 games have been far from mainstream. And that might be the case for a while, but SAGE Labs did show that high engagement is possible, racking up over 2 million transactions on launch day. Every single interaction was on-chain, something very few games have done so far.

OPENFORMAT News:

Our next wave of case studies… a Global VC firm and artist-first music company:

Purpose Unlimited

OPENFORMAT and Purpose Unlimited co-developed a dynamic rewards system, translating employee community engagement into redeemable tokens for exclusive items and merchandise at the Purpose Shopify store.

Amplify

Amplify used the OPENFORMAT toolkit to launch AmplifyLive, a world-first experiment designed to offer continuous income to artists. It was a Bristol-based gig with in-person and livestream access requiring a digital collectible ticket.

And that’s all for this week.

Have a great weekend, Dan and the OPENFORMAT team 👋🏽

Prompt (Generated using Dalle-3): “Illustration of a top-down view of a gaming console on a wooden table. The console's design includes motifs of interconnected nodes, symbolizing neural networks. The screen connected to it showcases a game with rich, evolving landscapes and AI characters that learn and adapt in real-time, providing players with ever-changing challenges and experiences.”