"I'm a Strong Believer in Blockchain; This is Just the Beginning:" Atari CEO Fred Chesnias

In this week’s episode I interview Fred Chesnias, the CEO of Atari. The video game company now has a token and plans to release a wallet and even an exchange. The token is an erc20, which Atari hopes will get used across any game, not just their own. With the token, users will be able to buy Atari NFTs, which include wearables to make a fashion statement in the metaverse. Fred believes blockchain and crypto can be a way to make it out of poverty, even leveraging video games themselves, reselling avatars and in-game items.

Beyond blockchains he also talks about business; Chesnias was able to take Atari out of deep financial stress and turn it around. He gives advice to founders and business owners going through difficult times. One of the three main lessons he learned was to oversimplify. Listen to find out what else!

🎙Listen to the interview in this week’s podcast episode here:

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CR: I'm very excited for this episode. Here we are with Fred Chesnias. He's the CEO of Atari, the famous video game company, which you wouldn't normally associate with anything crypto, but they have recently launched a token. So I'm really excited to learn all about that and the company's strategy into crypto. But first, Fred, welcome to The Defiant podcast. Thank you so much for joining me today.

FC: Thanks for having me. Thank you.

CR: First, I would love to talk about your background before we get into the Atari token. How long have you been at the company and if you just can give an overview on where Atari is at right now?

Rebooting Atari

FC: So initially, I'm more an investor, a banker, and a lawyer, so more somebody who invests. I’m not a tech guy. In 2000, I joined a company, Infogrames. We were doing video games and Infogrames had just bought the Atari brand from Hasbro. We named the company Atari. It was our company. Basically, we were just a team of managers. In 2006/2007, a hedge fund became the largest shareholder so we all left.

The company was renamed Atari throughout the world at the time, and the hedge fund finally had some issues, some troubles. So the hedge fund went into liquidation in 2012-2013. They called me and I was able to come back in 2013. I engineered the turnaround. Atari was in bankruptcy, I became the largest shareholder, and we've been rebooting the company since then. But at the time, the situation was pretty desperate, because they had like 1 million euros of revenue, and more than 30 million euros of debt.

I came back early 2013. So today the company does games. Right now we have no more debt, we’re doing a road-to-revenue in the range of 24-25 million euros. We're profitable, no more debt. We’re doing very simple things. We do games, that's really the DNA of the company. We do games online, but we've stopped doing boxes; we use partners when we have boxes to sell.

The second thing that we're doing: We are launching a new hardware product. It's a mini-computer. It is not a console. It is a mini-computer with some console environment. It's called the Atari Video Computer System, VCS. We've been working on this project for quite some time, very happy about it. The first feedback is great. It is a computer. It is not a console. On the computer, you will have some blockchain related activities, some content, some games on the blockchain. So second activity: Video Computer System, hardware.

Then the third business is mainly licensing, brand licensing. We have Atari Hotels. We have toys that we do with partners. So this is basically the rest of the business, which is t-shirts, toys, and things that we like to do, but with partners. As far as blockchain is concerned, it's a combination, a couple of things. But it's basically on the one end, I'm a strong believer in blockchain. I really support the technology. I believe it is here to stay. I believe that this is just the beginning.

“I'm a strong believer in blockchain. I really support the technology. I believe it is here to stay. I believe that this is just the beginning.”

At the same time, it blends very well with the Atari brand because I think the brand really means evolution. I don't want to say revolution because it will be too big, but evolution, entertainment, and technology, so something new that combines entertainment gameplay, game features, interactive gaming, and technology. This is really what I think the brand is about. So if someone wants to think about doing something new that combines a good brand and entertainment and some technology features, for me, it’s Atari. This is nothing else. Based on that we decided to launch blockchain initiatives--I can come back, of course, during the course of the broadcast. But this is what we're doing today: software, hardware, brand licensing. And then the blockchain is really across the board. I think it's a user opportunity because it's here to stay, definitely.

“[Blockchain] blends very well with the Atari brand because I think the brand really means evolution, entertainment, and technology”

CR: So interesting. Before we get into more specifics on the blockchain side of the business, I'm really interested to hear more about how you were able to turn around the company from having such a huge pile of debt and little revenue into being profitable at the moment? I don't expect you to dig into every single thing, but what were the key aspects that helped you turn it around?

Survive, Rebuild, Expand

FC: Basically, we have three phases. One was like survival mode, which was 2013, 2014, 2015, trying to turn around the company to relaunch products and to redeem some debt. Then 2016, we were basically debt-free. Took three years. Then we had the rebuilding phase, because when you're in survival mode, you can't really rebuild. So we built the company and now we are in the third phase, an expansion. It's three years of survival, three years to rebuild and then expansion mode. So these are just in terms of timelines, how it happened.

Now, if you look at what we've done during this period of time, it's a combination of on the one end, launching. We had to reboot somewhere. So we re-started with two games. One was Atari Vault. The second one was Atari RollerCoaster Tycoon, which we released on mobile. So it was two games I had to select, because we have more than 200 games in the portfolio. I had to select two games and these were the two games that I selected, because I knew them quite well. It was very clear for me what was going on.

Two games that we selected, SAGAN, a very strong licensing program. Here, it was just like a big roadshow, one-man show just to convince partners that yes, Atari was definitely out of the woods and all the issues were beyond us, and it was worth it for them to invest in the brand with us. We started with the Atari Flashback that we created two years ago, some Atari arcade gaming machine; so second tool, a very strong licensing program. The third tool, you know, I'm an investor, banker, financial guy and lawyer. Yes, there was some financial engineering.

But so far, so good. I don't want to dig into the weeds, into the details here, but got it some financial engineering.

CR: This is interesting for many founders that listen to the podcast. What were some of the lessons you learned from that process? Also, what do you think you can recommend to others in that position, where they are seeing their company in a very difficult situation, how to come out of that if you can give a piece of advice?

Thriving in Chaos

CF: Just a few things. One is the world is complex, and the world is always changing, so it's impossible to solve all the issues at the same time. So you really have to oversimplify. What's my main issue today? Especially if you're in a difficult situation, you're going to get calls and calls and calls from people asking you for money, for this or that. So you really have to first oversimplify and determine where you want to go. Yes, there’s going to be a lot of noise. Yes, you're going to get nasty calls. But at the end of the day, you have to be able to prioritize whose opinion you have to deal with, what you have to rebuild first, and then what can come second, even if it means having difficult conversations. So I think that’s the first.

One, oversimplify. ‘Where do you want to go?’ Second, again, same thing. Because the world is very complex. You can lose time looking at emails because you're going to make mistakes, right? You release a game, you're going to have some people say, well, it's a bad game. You're going to have people say, well, it's a great game. I think at the end of the day, you can't take everything into account; it’s just impossible. You really have to look at what is the overall sentiment? Do people like overall what you're doing? If that's the case, then keep doing it. If not, just be lucid and honest with yourself. Just say okay, that was a mistake. So that’s the second thing. Over-simplify is one and then decide what you want to do. It’s impossible to solve all the issues.

The third one is trying not to go all in. Meaning, don't put your eggs in the same basket. Don't go all in on something, because there's still a chance that the other guys have a better hand. So don't go all in. Always make sure that you stay at the table. Just go a little bit, a little bit. If it works, then of course, double, triple, quadruple the investment, quadruple the effort. But don't go all in unless you know that you have tested the product and you know that the product is great.

So for instance, to give you a sense, on RollerCoaster Tycoon, we didn't go all in. We released the first product, we tested it, it was not so good. So we tweaked it, we pushed it again, and then it did work. At the time, we decided to invest more. But don't all go in. So first oversimplify; you won't be able to know where you're going. Second, don’t try to solve all your issues at once. It's impossible. Third, don't go all in.

“First, oversimplify; you won't be able to know where you're going. Second, don't try to solve all your issues at once. It's impossible. Third, don't go all in.”

CR: Such great advice. I'd love to talk more about this computer system with blockchain incorporated, can you explain more how it works?

Atari Video Computer System

FC: So the blockchain is not really incorporated, it's a computer, so you can have a node on the chain. We're going to have more content between the blockchain friendly and blockchain oriented. So what's really happening is, it's a mini-computer, it's super cheap, like 300 bucks for 8 gig of memory. For $400, you also have the joystick, you have a controller, you have a companion app, but it's a virtual keyboard. But it's a computer, and inside the computer you can upgrade the memory, you can go from 8 giga to 16, 30, wherever you want to go. It's Linux-based, so you can install the operating system of your choice. So this is very flexible.

It comes with Google Chrome. That comes with the machine. But of course, if you want to install Windows, you have to install Windows, you have to buy it and install it. It's perfect to use. Basically, the main use case is to use it in your living room on your TV. It's a computer and right now there is no one that has a computer in the living room. Why? Because they are not very nice, you don't want to show an Apple in the living room. I'm not the designer. I mean, the design is just great. So this is a computer.

Inside the computer, you also have a console type of environment and a store that we’ve created. The store contains and will contain more and more applications, games, streaming systems. We have, for instance, a special application with n-stream. We have games. We have a lot of content, and it will just keep growing. If you compare the store of the App Store today to what it was day one, I mean, it’s not comparable, right?

So the idea behind it--I don’t want to say the vision--but the idea behind the VCS is, we believe that there is room today to have some mini-computers in the living room, nice machines that people can use to play their Steam games, to play Minecraft on TV, to share from TV, because we have some limitations with the smart TVs. And here you have a system that you can proudly show in your living room. But there's a lot of power, but you can just upgrade. I think, this is for us, just like you have two companies that control the phone business and the phone experience. I think it was worth the risk for us to go with a machine that would offer something different in the living room and that's really the use case.

“We believe that there is room today to have some mini-computers in the living room, nice machines that people can use to play their Steam games, to play Minecraft on TV, to share from TV, because we have some limitations with the smart TVs.”

CR: So what's the advantage of having a computer versus a console? Why not just do a console?

Computer vs Console

FC: Well, you have many things that you cannot do with a console. First, the console has advantages. Don't get me wrong. You have billions of dollars in investment. You have games that you can't play otherwise. But at the same time, more and more, you have the same content on PC, right? All the games today are released on Xbox, the Microsoft devices, the Sony PlayStation, and PC. Switch is different. So there are things that you can do with the console, but there are things that you can't do. It's impossible to have a PowerPoint on the Sony PlayStation. You can't have any other application than the ones they allow you to install, right? It is a closed system.

A computer is an open system. You can customize it. You can play retro games. You can play any game you want. It's PC-based. It's not a console. But at the same time, you can share, you can download, you can move stuff around. It's PC, you can make Excel calculations. So we think that a PC has less constraints than the console. We believe that with this system in the living room, if it is successful, you would see a lot of applications coming and being developed for it.

CR: So for example, since it's an open system, that means that people can play not just Atari games, but any games that they can find that are PC-based?

FC: It's open, exactly. It's open, and you can install the operating system you want.

CR: Then so part of this, you were saying that your idea is for people to run blockchain nodes on their computer?

FC: Yes, computer, so you can use it just like you're using your computer. So we will have some content relating to blockchain, we will have our wallet. Right now, the point for us was to release the machines, ship them, make sure that everything was working, where the store was functioning that people could connect, make purchases, and then next level will be more and more content, more and more games, more and more applications.

CR: You mentioned earlier that you are a big blockchain believer. I'd love to dig more into that. What was your first experience with crypto and blockchain technology, and why did you become such a big believer in it?

Escaping Poverty with Crypto

FC: You know, the first experience is, like everyone, wish we would have started earlier. I see things are moving in the game space and the money system, and we have released a white paper as Atari. So I can tell you, I'm just going to give you two examples.

I think it's a lot of fun playing on the blockchain, when you can really be sure that if you take any fees, you know exactly how many NFTs are there, what's going on. So, I think there's a lot of new game plays, especially right now in terms of card games. So you see why I like it, as a gamer. Now outside of games, if you read the white paper, it basically says that there’s a lot of people today that will not be able to have a bank account, just because they don't have an address and/or they don't have an ID and/or they don't meet the criteria to basically pass KYC and AML requirements. There's a lot of people like this worldwide.

We are an exception. I mean, you, me, we can live without cryptocurrency. But there's, I would say at least--I don't want to put the number--but that is more than 4 billion people today. I go a lot to Africa, I don't know India that much, but I go a lot to Africa. It's very difficult today to have bank accounts. I think that being able to have cryptocurrency contracts on the blockchain, smart contracts, that blockchain will let these people do some intelligent work on the chain.

For instance, in video games, you can test video games for us, we’d give you some crypto. You can translate, you can make some little animations, as long as you have access to the internet. I think this is the next big thing, you know, the fact that you'd see a lot of systems being shipped, being launched, providing internet connections. You have the one from Google. You have the one from SpaceX. So, all of these systems will make that. There will be a lot more people connected. They will want to work and I think that we find work on the chain, or at least on the internet, but more and more on the chain working for us. And they will never have a bank account and we will use smart contracts and cryptocurrencies to various people. For me, the big picture is, I believe, one of the best ways for these people to basically make it out of poverty. I'm just going to give you a very simple example.

“I believe, [cryptocurrency] is one of the best ways for these people [the underbanked] to basically make it out of poverty.”

Today, you can download a game, free to play. You build an avatar. You can resell the avatar. For you, for me, 50 bucks, 70 bucks, it's not going to make a difference, right? We're not going to be able to make a living out of that. I can tell you that in some countries, if you start doing that, 4, 5, 6, 7 times a month, you download the game, you play the game, you build your avatar up to level 45, you sell the avatar. You're going to make $600, $700, $1,000 a month, it’s going to change your life, and that you can only do with blockchain.

CR: That's such an amazing use case that's coming up in this intersection between crypto blockchain and gaming. So, last month in November, you launched the Atari token. How does the token fit in your broader blockchain strategy? What's the long term, big plan there?

Atari Token

FC: It's very simple. I'm going to be very blunt. We don't run a charity. So this is a company that's listed. So we play the money game. At the end of the day, we're here to turn a profit for the shareholders, including me, because I'm one of the largest shareholders. We don't run a charity, what we want is to create an Atari ecosystem on the blockchain that will help us generate revenues, fees, profit, using our brand, our games, and basically any type of experience we can offer on the blockchain. That's our goal. Let’s say that's our economic goal: create Atari ecosystem. For us to achieve that goal, that economy goal, we need, of course, to have some good ideas, some good games, some good applications, but this is what we have to do.

“We don't run a charity, what we want is we want to create an ecosystem, Atari ecosystem on the blockchain that will help us generate revenues, fees, profit, using our brand, our games, and basically any type of experience we can offer on the blockchain.”

Now, to do that, we need tools, we need content, and we need tools. Content-wise, we have games that we do a lot that we do with partners. We are working on some applications, but have not been released yet. But we work on interactive applications, fun things to do to generate revenue. At the same time, I believe that in order to achieve an economic goal of the Atari ecosystem, we need tools. So we have games and applications. This is the interactive experience, but we need the tools. I think adding tools at the same time as we offer games, and applications is going to help us to achieve the goal.

The tools are, first of all, the token. We are not going to create our own platform like trying to be a competitor against Ethereum and things like this, wouldn't make any sense. But we have the wallet, we are working on an exchange and we have the token. So in order of priority, it was the token, now the wallet has been submitted to Apple and Google, so it should be out pretty soon, knock on wood. But I think it's another part. Once you have someone in your ecosystem, you don't want that person to go somewhere else,sowe created our own wallet. The next is an exchange, so you can exchange your cryptocurrencies. But you have applications and you have tools, and the first tool we wanted to have was the token.

CR: What does that token do? Also, what is that tool used for?

FC: So the token is basically a utility token. Some of the NFTs with Enjin and The Fabricant will only be available against Atari token. You can see a portion of the NFTs and they are the great NFTs, check that out. It will be on opensea.io. So you will have some NFTs that will be available against ETH. The same NFTs, a portion of them, will be available only against Atari token, so it's a way for us to drive traffic and people get used to that token.

We are launching our own casino. This morning and yesterday I was testing the Atari casino. So maybe by the time the podcast is released, you'll see that the Atari casino on the blockchain is out there. The token is really like a virtual tool that lets you play inside games. At the same time for us, we are going to use it also again as a means of exchange to build stakes in other projects. But for the users, it's really like a virtual token in any game, except that you can use it in as many games as possible.

The big thing is, we didn't want to keep the tokens for ourselves. We're trying to push the token in as many games as possible. It's available on opensea.io. It's available in our games. It's available on Robocash. It’s going to be available on Atari.io, on arcade networks. So we just said, guys, you want a token? Yeah, sure, use it. That's the best thing we can do.

CR: So is the token being used inside these games for gamers to buy whatever in-game items?

FC: Or NFTs, yes.

CR: Or NFTs inside Atari games, right?

FC: No, not only Atari games. Look if someone has a game out there and wants to make our tokens compatible with his games, just call us, we'll do it.

CR: So is your plan, or is your goal for the Atari token to become a broadly used token inside all of the gaming industry?

FC: We had two choices. The first one was to say it's only on our platform, and only in our games. The second one was, you know, what? The more tokens, the more users, the more use cases, the better, so we took the second option. But I’ve just said, if you're listening to this,if you want the Atari token in your game, just contact us on Atarichain.com, there’s an email, we'll gladly answer. There’s no fee, no nothing. The token is not mineable, it's already pre-minted. Yeah, just take it and we'll do some promotion for you. We'll make sure that we do some joint announcements and hopefully, it will bring you some more traffic. We don't charge for that. It's better for us to do it this way, rather than to say, oh, you can only use it on our platform. This is not what I wanted to do.

CR: Can you talk about the token sale itself and the tokenomics? So you said all of the tokens were already issued?

Atari Tokenomics

FC: Yes, they are minted, yes, it's not mineable. It's an ERC-20 token. All the tokenomics are on Atarichain.com. So right now, the circulating supply is around 69 million tokens as of today, while I'm doing this podcast, so yeah, it's a long template. It’s not a hit and run project. So, what's going to happen, we're just going to keep pushing. For the moment, we are at 69, it's not a lot of tokens. We have a burn policy as well, so if the token is not used, not sold, we're just going to burn it, very simple. We have a burn policy to burn tokens on the first day of every quarter. Very simple. So that's the best way to do it.

CR: Do you have some sort of inflation policy? How often will the tokens be issued?

FC: No, no, we have set the maximum number of tokens. We have, for the moment, the circulating supply. If we basically add tokens to the circulating supply it’s because we have a good reason. For instance, when we are going to launch the Atari casino, we will need to have some tokens available for the float, right, the number to pay the winnings. At the time we will make an announcement saying hey, we're moving X tokens from basically the reserve into the circulating supply. So far, it’s been three months, we haven't added any tokens to the circulating supply. So we just keep adding on a case by case basis.

CR: How big is the reserve?

FC: So well, again, it's 5 billion. But the point is, we can burn it if there is no use. So the most important thing is that we have rules also to bring tokens into the circulating supply. If you look at what we've done since the beginning, we haven't released any new token, because we just keep the ball rolling, we just keep growing. Again, it would be more like, okay, this is one event, like the release of the casino games, yes, we need the float. Boom! But it's not because it becomes part of the circulating supply, but it's available for sale. It will be just made available as people win. So it's step by step. We are not here just to dump the tokens. This is not what we've done, and not what we intend to do.

CR: How much did you raise in the sale?

FC: So we didn't want to raise too much because we didn't need the money. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's always nice to have a lot of money. But at the same time, we didn't want to put the tokens in the hands of the wrong people, meaning like speculators. You need speculation, that's necessary. At the same time, we want just to take the time to bring the use cases, create the community. This is why we didn't sell a lot, I think, we must have raised all together something in the range of $3 million.

CR: I wanted to ask you about the price of the token. Because at the time of the sale, it fell by a lot, like 80% or so from the initial sale price. Now it's found its bottom in the beginning of the month, and it has been climbing since then. But I just wanted to get your thoughts on why you think that big drop was in the first day or so of the sale, was it just maybe it was mispriced at the beginning, or what do you think happened?

FC: I don't want to really comment on that because I don't think this is my job just to comment on the price of the token. Of course, just like any CEO, if you ask somebody, about the value of the shares of the company, they will say, I think they should be higher. I think at the end of the day, the most important for me is that we provide liquidity to all the users and we keep working on the use cases. You can’t day trade the token and do the business based on the token that is fluctuating 5% a day in one direction and then 5% the following day in the other direction.

I think, at the end of the day, the market cap is just the beginning. So this is more the type of question I'd like to answer more in one year. I'm not deflecting the question, because I've been managing this in companies for a long time. I think, especially in crypto, it's impossible to exactly decide what's going on. You have people, all of a sudden, you sell some Bitcoin, you buy the Atari token, there’s a big increase in demand, and so I don't know exactly what's going on. So far, it has been coming up, I don't know. I can't tell you exactly why I think that is. But having said that, what I can tell you is that, starting tonight, we are releasing as many use cases as possible, good ones, so that people will see a real utility in the token.

CR: What are some of those use cases?

Atari Token Utility

FC: So we have the NFTs tonight. Today's December 21, Monday, so you're going to see a release of NFTs, a special collection of NFTs tonight. There was going to be another use case; on the 26th of December would be part of a raise. Then we have more and more, we are part of the Sandbox. We are the second largest landowner in the Sandbox with Animoca. You’re going to have more use casesm as well more games. So it's going to be more games, more games, more games, and then casino games, casino games, casino games. We're also working on some game financing features.

CR: I'm going to want to dig into all of those. So first with the NFTs, I'd love to hear more about that. Are these what you mentioned before avatars within your games? What type of NFTs are they?

Wearable Garment NFTs

FC: So the first NFT that you're going to see tonight, so when again at the time it's out, it will likely be sold out. It will be NFTs which are like pieces of garments, but you can buy and you can just basically Photoshop your photos, we’ll do it for you so you can show off and these are made by high-end designers. You can show up on social media with your photos. Or you can also, if you want to use the garments with t-shirts, say robes and you can play inside-game. If you play the video games, you would be able to wear those inside the games.

CR: For your avatar to look nice with high-end fashion while you're playing. Then obviously because these are basically Ethereum tokens, these NFTs, you're able to just use them wherever, right? Not just in Atari games?

FC: Yes, you can show it off. We do it for you. There will be a fee. But you will have, basically the option to Photoshop so you say just to make it simple. You can Photoshop your personal photos and you can then just update your pictures on Instagram, WhatsApp, you can just show off yourself wearing that high-end piece of garment, designed by a high-end designer.

CR: What are other plans do you have with NFTs in the future?

Atari Casino Games

FC: I think that for me, not only for Atari, but I think the next evolution is NFTs that can be used down the road in card games, so to say. So you buy the NFTs and not only can you own them, trade them, resell them, but you can also use it in the card game, and then earn more NFTs. I think this is the next big trend. We're working on some concepts like this. But I think for us, the second one is really the casino games. You take your Atari tokens, you can bet, you can play the roulette. So I was testing the casino side this morning. I think that's the next big one and that one is pretty easy to figure out.

“So you buy the NFTs and not only you can own them, trade them, resell them, but you can also use it in the card game, and then work more NFTs.”

CR: Oh, with Atari casino games, how are NFTs involved there? Or is that just kind of another token?

FC: No, this is for crypto. This is just for a token. I think NFTs are just at the beginning. Yeah, the simple NFTs but when you could craft them and make a third one. Now, I think you're going to have the interactive ones, the ones that we are using tonight. You see the ones that you can use in the card games down the road. So I think we'll find more use cases and a lot of fun ways to use these NFTs.

CR: The NFT space has been really heating up especially in the digital art space. There's been some really record sales with NFTs linked to digital art. What are your thoughts there? Is there any kind of crossover between gaming and digital art do you think?

FC: Maybe, we'll see. Maybe again, it’s a little bit too early. We'll see. We'll see.

CR: Would be interesting to see. You mentioned some sort of race game, what was that?

FC: I'm not sure it's going to happen by the time of this release. We're going to make an announcement this week. We're going to be about basically a race and you will be able to buy some Atari parts to be able to build a car using some Atari tokens, so yes.

CR: It looks like you're experimenting on a bunch of different things in the crypto blockchain space. What are your thoughts on just the broader gaming industry and the intersection with blockchain? Because it looks like, of the mainstream gaming companies, Atari is kind of at the forefront of incorporating crypto and blockchain. I don't think I've seen many other mainstream gaming companies and not blockchain-focused gaming companies interact with blockchain. Do you think this is a trend we'll continue to see in mainstream gaming?

FC: I think so. Yeah, this is going to be a big trend, I hope so. Because one could say, oh, it's better, I'm alone doing it. But at the same time, you need tech, you need some innovation. It's impossible for us to have only all the ideas. So I hope it's going to be this way.

CR: So for you, what's the advantage of incorporating crypto?

FC: I mean, people like it. It's a new type of gameplay. It's something that you can't find in a typical game because you're not able to buy an NFT, resell an NFT. It's great. It's just a different type of experience. Just like before, we had PC games and then the console, then came up mobile games, then PC online, MMOs, I think just a new type of game.

CR: To wrap up, I'm interested in how this presents a sort of, maybe a little bit of a contradiction in how traditional gaming companies have worked so far. Because, like you said, each company has been very much of a closed-end system, you have your own ecosystem, your console, your games, they are protected, there are protections for people who can't build on top of their games, everything has copyright, very opposite to what open and distributed systems blockchains are. And here you are still a centralized closed company on one end, but incorporating these open systems on the other end with a token that can be traded anywhere, NFTS that can be built on and traded anywhere. So how do you see that kind of a contradiction going forward? Do you see any sort of tension between the two sides of the company?

Centralized Structure with Open Systems

FC: No. I think it’s just a different world. So just like we do games, some companies, they do games on the blockchain, companies that don't do games on the blockchain, some do licensing, some do not, some go console, some go PC. It’s just a different type of experience. Right now, for big companies, going on the blockchain will not make a difference, so maybe come back later. But maybe, I would say, as the business grows, and as the blockchain activities grow, I mean, you will see more and more companies coming; you'll see bigger undertakings. So I think it's going to take some time.

CR:Then to finish up. A year from now, at this time, where would you like to see the crypto aspect of Atari?

FC: I think, if we get out of a good position in management and simulation games, I think that would be great, and second, if we have a good position in casino games, that would be also nice. Finally, thirdly, I'd like to have a non-game application that would be rolled out and up and running, especially I have a few things that we are working on in Africa. But let's say one big series of games, a nice position in casino games. And a third, but non-game project would be up and running, which one is going to take like two, three failures. Before we find out, we're going to launch three for non-gaming applications and non-game applications, and then we'll see which one works. Right now, everyone is working. Everyone is trying to find out what the next big play is, so there's going to be, in innovation is going to be of course, a lot of mistakes, a lot of errors, and you will have some winners. So in fact, you could have one winner out of the game segment, so to say, it will be nice.

CR: So on these non-game applications, what are you thinking about?

Game Financing

FC: More about that in like two months, we're thinking game financing, or just transfers between different countries. But game financing could be one.

CR: Sorry, what's game financing?

FC: Staking some tokens so that you can earn in exchange a percentage of the revenue of an upcoming game.

CR: Oh, interesting. So that's definitely more of an intersection between gaming and DeFi. I'd love to see more of that.

FC: It’s still related to gaming, still close to us. But so to say, it's not strictly a video game experience, or it's an interactive entertainment experience.

CR: Awesome. So you would stake Atari tokens to this game?

FC: Yes. But it's more complex. So it needs some licenses. It needs a lot of elements. That’s why this is going to take a lot of time.

CR:That sounds so interesting. I'd love to hear more about that when it's out. So yeah, definitely something to look forward to with Atari, game financing industry might be kind of the new thing for DeFi as well.

FC: Thank you.

CR: Awesome, Fred. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me. This was super interesting.

The Defiant is a daily newsletter focusing on decentralized finance, a new financial system that’s being built on top of open blockchains. The space is evolving at breakneck speed and revolutionizing tech and money.

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About the founder and editor: Camila Russo is the author of The Infinite Machine, the first book on the history of Ethereum, and was previously a Bloomberg News markets reporter based in New York, Madrid and Buenos Aires. She has extensively covered crypto and finance, and now is diving into DeFi, the intersection of the two.