CCG Chronicles #6 - How to Metagame the Labor Market
This episode is a continuation of the CCG Chronicles series which is a collection of interviews conducted during the Crypto Commons Gathering (CCG) in Austria back in August 2021. The interviews were also filmed to potentially be a part of a documentary I'm making with a few others. I interviewed Peth (@Petheth), founder of Metagame, a very interesting project that has been running for a couple of years at this point to help people who are interested in working on web3 / crypto projects. ...
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Transcript
Hi, everyone. What you're about to listen to is an interview that I took in person while attending the Crypto Commons Gathering Conference in Austria in August 2021. The conference itself was a wonderful experience where people of a lot of different backgrounds and political ideas were able to discuss openly and safely about how crypto can intersect with fostering the commons. What you'll notice from these interviews is that these differences in thought are sometimes apparent because we all come from different places. And what was honestly refreshing about the experience is that we could do it in a supportive environment. This This is probably one of the most receptive audiences in crypto to socialism, which was really great for me. Also, a heads up is that you may notice sometimes that the audio was clearly recorded in the house that we were all staying in, which wasn't the best place for recording, but we did the best that we could with what we had. A lot of the interviews will also likely feature in the documentary that I'm making about the world of crypto and its potential futures with a friend. A big reason I was able to make it to this conference was thanks to all the support I received from patrons. So if you find the work that I do important, I hope you'll consider helping out starting at $3 per month on patreon.com/theblockchainsocialist. So we're at the Crypto Commons Gathering, and I am with Pete, who is one of the founders of MetaGame. This is a very interesting project. A little bit, maybe, difficult to wrap your head around, but I think it's it's really interesting once you can. But maybe to start off, Pete, if you wanna give a quick introduction to yourself and, how you ended up at the CryptoCommons Gathering.
I'm Pete, and, do I got here through crypto through the crypto side of things, but I got into crypto through the common side of things. So I was always researching these sort of alternative economic systems. You know, the the Zeitgeist trilogy was one, like, my favorite documentaries when I was a teenager. And so after that, I was always looking into these sort of, like, eco villages and these sort of things. And then when I found crypto, it was like, oh, like, this is, like, the the economic infrastructure layer for the all of these sort of things to to allow them to scale. And, that's why, like, crypto instantly clicked in my head, which I think, yeah, like, researching all that previously, I think is what allowed me to understand crypto so easily. Like, to most people it's just too abstract, but, yeah, I was into weird stuff.
So you're already interested in sort of, like, alternative, economic systems, in which you were able to quite easily make a connection with crypto. Right. And, so I guess what what was you know, what did you start doing after that once you discovered crypto?
I just, like, took all of my money and shoved it in. I'm like, okay. So, like,
this can change the world and make me money, like, at the same time? Like, what the fuck? And I just started putting everything that I had
inside. People were telling them crazy. So how did you end up? But it was like, also it like it wasn't a lot of money because I was a plumber in Croatia. So Yeah. Yeah. And I didn't have much of savings, but yeah.
And and so lead us through the process. How did you end up at the crypto commons gathering?
I think I met Felix. He we invited him to come speak at the MetaFest, and he also invited a bunch of comments people. So he got him got him to speak at our conference. And then after that, he invited me to come speak here.
So it was a mutual mutual interaction of,
inviting each other? But I I actually had to I actually had to refuse it at first because, we were playing our own gathering in Italy at the Liminal Village. Right. And, like, it didn't make sense to come here and then be here for two days to go be in Italy on September 1. And then our host from Italy, Roberto, was like, hey. I'm going to the thing called the crypto commons gathering. Could you maybe come on the fifth? I was like, is this the sign? Like, should I go to the crypto commons gathering after all? Oh, nice. And, yeah, I did.
That's cool. And the the Liminal village is like this it's it's an eco village,
in in Billy Crates, something like that. Yeah. It's kind of it's going towards that. It's, it's a property with, like, two houses where, Roberto organizes hack alongs. So he invites teams out there to build things together.
So maybe we can start off before getting into what is meta game, the project you're walking you're working on, maybe you can define what exactly is a meta game,
the concept. Yeah. Meta game is, like, the most effective way to play the game. So it's sort of, like, playing game, but playing out sort of, like, outside of the prescribed rules of the game and trying to use the external factors to influence the game. And that's sort of how we see crypto, like, playing in the current world. And people sort of metagame in the current system by, like, exiting the traditional employment system and, like, joining crypto and, like, working crypto projects because we're kind of, yeah, building these alternative systems in parallel that are kind of, undermining the the mainstream system.
So is playing playing the meta game in, like, I don't know. I guess poker would be, like, a very it's a game that includes a lot of meta game that, like, you you know, kind of looking into people's eyes and trying to see, oh, is that person, like, you know, is he lying or is he not? But, I mean, if you're looking purely at the game, it's just a game of, like, probability. Mhmm. But so much of that game is played in the meta game. Right. Is that sort of how you would?
Yeah. But then, like, the meta meta game was like if you were able to, like, spawn, like, print cards under the table. Like, it should That's cheating. And again, basically cheating. Yeah. Like, yeah. Using outside, resources to to influence the game.
Mhmm. And and so how do you think that that relates to crypto? How? Like, a, as part of it is, by going into crypto to a certain extent, I think it's debatable the extent, you are outside of, like, traditional infrastructure.
Right. Yeah. We're, like, siphoning the talent of the Wall Street, you know, like, the traditional systems or, like, Google or whatever, like Azure. And, we are in the gen to join crypto. So, like, at the same time, we're taking the resources away from them, but also using that resources to build alternatives that could potentially replace them.
Right. That's been a huge theme in the conference. Sure. And can you explain what exactly is the project meta game that you're working on? How how does how is what game are we playing, and what is the meta game of the game that we're playing? Yeah. So this project. Our little instance of meta game. Yeah.
The meta game that we are playing is trying to build the onboarding and, like, the inter the social layer of this cryptoeconomic systems. So, like, trying to bring into one place anything that people need for, yeah, first about first learning what even is crypto and, like, what why do we think is cool? Because, like, most of the people getting into crypto, like, okay, number go up. And like they're told all about this financial side of things. And, I feel like, yeah, with each hype cycle, the narrative has been lost that people don't even know what crypto is about. And it's all been about, the gains. And, so we're trying to, yeah, bring back the narratives and teach people, like, what crypto is really about. So, like, yeah, part of it is just basic onboarding. So getting people from not knowing anything about crypto to knowing, like, what it means and what it would mean for them. And then helping them, like, find projects that they could contribute to or, like, skills that they could acquire, which they could then use to contribute to projects. And then the other side of things is helping people who are already are in the crypto to do their own projects. So, like, we go to hackathons and, like, collaborate with other hackathon projects, help them get funding, help them yeah. Whatever else they need. But, yeah, basically the other side of things is bringing it together into one place, anything that people need to do something in crypto. So, like, from the knowledge resources and, like, just gathering links, like, even that is, like, immensely helpful to newcomers. Just getting, like, an index of, like tools and basic stuff like that. But also like helping them, helping connect people to other people who can help them build their project, build their projects. And, we have other organizations that are part of the network that offer, like, either funding or, like, design or building services. So we are trying to build this decentralized factory, which is all about bringing together these pieces that people need for doing something in crypto.
So it sounds to me that the sort of the game, the primary the game the base player game that you guys are like meta gaming is sort of like the labor market a bit? Because what you guys are doing, from what I understand, is like trying to match people, like with projects that they can help out so that they don't necessarily have to work with, you know, standard Mhmm. Corporate job or something like that. Right.
Yeah. That's I think definitely will be a huge part of it. I mean, the, like, the end goal is to build this whole decentralized society. So, like, going on from here, like, we imagine it only, like, three to five years to start connecting with physical locations. These are like eco villages and like co working spaces and whatnot. But actually we already have some in the network. So it's more of more a matter of like creating an interface, like bringing them together right now into the interface so people can discover them. But, yeah, like the goal is to build this whole essential society. And then, like, the first we build our own, like, tools for, like, accounting for contributions and things like that. But then the first project was building these profiles, which are meant for people to show what skills they have. And so it allows like easier matchmaking layer. And then the next step will be to have like a list of, open roles that projects can post or like the, what people offer and what, what they demand, things like that. So like, yeah, market is definitely, some sort of labor market to enable the society to build itself.
Right. It's I think it's, a bit of gaming what is, like, sort of the yeah, the tradition traditional systems and finding, it's almost like you're, like, shepherding people away from that and into the crypto sphere. Right. Yeah.
And then, yeah, like, also wanted to mention that, like, really long term, the idea is to, like, establish sort of a resource based economy so that people don't really need the money to do something. They can just create tokens that represent either different resources. So, like, if you're a building guild, maybe you have a building token. If you're a marketing guild, you have, like, a shield token. And projects sell their own tokens. And, like, theoretically, like, people can just, exchange all these different resource tokens and project tokens and not actually need money
to do things together. That's super interesting. Because in beginning, you mentioned that you put half of your money into crypto and you're like, oh, I can change the world and make money. But you're using that to try to build a world in which you don't need money, I guess. Right. To a certain sense. Yeah.
Yeah. I had to like, enable enable myself to do to be able to do this, which, like, yeah. I still haven't sold any of my seeds, and for the first year that I was working with Netagim, they were worth zero. So, like, I was, living off of the money that I got from before to be able to do this for free.
Oh, wow. That's your yeah. I understand that. I totally get that. What so when you describe, so, like, at the moment, it's sort of like a matchmaking community, I guess, sort of say. And then with the future vision of being, like, creating an alternative some type of alternative system that isn't as, like I I imagine the hope is, like, not to be so financialized.
Right. Yeah. To have a system that's, like, more focused on, like, solving problems, like, putting the problems really at the center rather than, like, profit. Right. And so, like, one of the simple ways we try to do that is, like, having the dashboard which displays, like, when you get into meta game with SEO, how are you doing? And like, okay, you're not doing well. What's wrong? And like, things like that. And then we have, like, social metrics that, like, you join, you see the dashboard and see, like, there are angry people today. Like, what's wrong? Like, how do they fix it? But also generally, like, having boards where people can just post problems that they want to solve and have people coordinate around solving problems.
Right. How do you feel about like, I mean, do you have any fear about how the crypto world is sort of developing at the moment? I think that the general, like, you look at it on the surface, it feels like it's becoming, a more and more financialized space. And I know you've I've I've seen your tweets before, critical of of that sort of trend.
Just give me your thoughts on that. Yeah. Yeah. I get I get annoyed because that's like, when I first got into crypto and I got from that background of alternative economies and that sort of thing, I sort of thought that, like, everybody sees it in the same way. Like, everybody sees, okay, this is the technology to to establish sort of, like, post capitalist socioeconomic system. And, yeah. For some reason I thought that, okay, I got it this way, and then everybody thinks this way. But then as as I got into the actual community, and I was like, okay, like, they're mostly libertarians. And, like, most of them are into hyper capitalism and not, like, completely free market. And so that's been a bit of a disappointing journey.
Yeah. But it's it's it was still good. And then, like,
as time went on, like, with each, hype cycle, like, it's been getting worse, and it's been more and more about money. And I was specifically most annoyed with, like, DAOs because, like, initially, when we were when we were in school was talking about DAOs, it was all about all, like, democratic organizations, like decentralized. But it turns out that, like, most of the people don't didn't really know, I guess, what is implied, like, what kind of decentralization. Right. So what turns out is, like, just architectural decentralization. Like, the organization is on a blockchain, but, like, it doesn't mean that it's actually, like, politically decentralized, that, like, decision making is decentralized. And the, what we're getting is, like, this sort of decentralized organizations, which are just plutocracies, like just Yeah. Are governed by money, which is also been disappointing. Yeah. But, yeah, I think a lot of people are working on solutions for this. I mean, there are I think there are also, like, good reasons why people can still currently have it this way. Like, no good civil resistance. Like, you can't really have a democratic system when anybody can just create infinite accounts. So there are problems that need to be solved. But, yeah, there there are definitely worrying parts about the current trend.
Yeah. Have you had to, like because I imagine people you might have people that come into meta game with that mindset. Do you have to like maybe you get, like, deprogram them a little bit or something? Yeah. I'll try to explain that to them. We try to filter them before they get
into it. Yeah. Yeah. So like on the landing page, you have, like, who meta game is for, and then the final point is who meta game is not for. And he said, like, those who are here to, like, get rich quick, those who want the Lambos and a few lines like that. We try to illustrate the point, but still, like, since it's, it's become predominantly about people who are here to get money, then, like, there are more and more people who are like that and who get into me, like, oh, how can I get seeds? And, like, yeah, definitely to, like, a part of it is deprogramming and, like, trying to really explain meta game to people before they get into meta game so I don't, like, come with weird expectations. Mhmm. Yeah.
I have to I was gonna ask a question, then I forgot it.
Also like, with seeds, like people ask, oh, why should I buy seeds? And I always say like, the number one reason because you like meta game, you want it to succeed. Like, those should be the that should be the reason. Like, you if you really want, you can buy it like partially for speculative reasons. And like, we do have like plans on making seeds, make more sense. But like, that should be the main reason. Like, we really want to keep on marketing that as the main point. Okay. You, the reason you buy seeds is because you like meta game. Like, that's why I should buy seeds.
Yeah. I imagine that's, like, a fairly difficult, onboarding process or filtering process
Yeah. In the crypto space. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which explains, like, why seeds still have, like, a 1,200,000 market cap, which in crypto is, like nothing.
How do you think the like through this filtering process, how do you think the meta game community differs from maybe other types of crypto communities?
I guess it's, like, more honest in some ways than a lot of communities which, like, promise more, I guess. And, like, we try to really underpromise and, like, try to explain what it's Right. Okay. Don't expect to make money. Don't expect, like, try to come without expectations. And, like, general onboarding, I think we're doing pretty good. Like, we got a decent onboarding system because that was previously our main pain point. Like, people, like,
just dropped in and have no idea, like, what to actually do. But maybe can you explain, like, if if I want to join meta game, what do I need to do?
So, like, the the official path is to fill out the form in the wiki. But after you fill out the form, you are also encouraged to join Discord, which is how, like, most active people actually get in because, like, they are not happy with just leaving at the form. They get in and they start asking questions and but, yeah, like, when people express interest, they're, like, somebody talks to them, and if they seem like they're interested enough or, like, aligned enough with the ideas, then they are given this testing role, which is called the engaged doctor. And then they have this sort of onboarding program where they there are calls every Friday, which onboard, like, we have this guy called Nizant, which used to be a tourist guide. So he does a pretty good job at, like, showing people around. Yeah. And, they need to create at least, 20 XP, which is not a lot in, four weeks. And then they like, become full full players. And besides that, we have, like, we have different paths for different roles. Like, not all roles have paths, but all the roles have, like, at least three to five evergreen quests, which are like, quests that really anybody can complete. Like, they're super simple. Like, right? That's one of the things that we're trying to do is, like, really lower the contribution bar as low as possible and make it so that, like, any anybody, like, even without any skills whatsoever can do at least one little thing. And, like, also even focused a lot on nontechnical people. Because in in general, people getting getting to crypto and they're like, oh, I'm not a developers. There's not not not a developer. There's nothing for me to do, but there's a lot of things to do for non developers. Yeah. So that's that's what we're trying to also, like, explain and show these different paths. And yeah.
What I find interesting is that you use, like, gaming terminology. Like, video games, like, as a you're when you say you're you're calling people players as opposed to which is the the game that you're metagaming is the labor market in which you're a worker. Mhmm. But here, you're referring to people as players and you have, like, quests and things like that. Using, like, gaming terminology to explain, I guess, what would just be, like, you know, it's a fucking task that your boss tells you to do Yeah. You had your normal job.
Yeah. Like, quest is just a task. It just makes it sound more fun fun, I guess. Mhmm. It definitely caters to a certain type of crowd, which, like, I also Gaming crowd. Yeah. Like, more nerdy people, which are, like, people who are building this space, kind of. Yeah. And the overall, like, the main reason we're doing this is to really try to try to make it as fun as possible. Make making it fun to create post capitalist systems. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, like, yeah, a lot of people who work in MetaGame will always say that, like, it really doesn't feel like work. Like, you do things, like, you pick you pick your own work, you do what you like, what you want to do, and you hang out with all these cool people, and it's fun. And, yeah, people like it.
Nice. Now I have to ask you because ask everyone, but what do the crypto commons mean to you?
The crypto commons. Yeah. You told me to think about that question,
but I didn't.
What did they mean to me? Yeah. I guess, like, merging, trying to merge again, like, crypto with these sort of post capitalist ideas rather than letting it go on to these hyper capitalist ideas where which is, like, the main trend. So to me, it,
it kinda means hope. Like, there
are people who really are about, like, establishing new systems, who really aren't here, like, because somebody told them that they can make a lot of money. And I think that's that's great. Nice.
Well, thanks a lot for taking the time. People should definitely check out MetaGame. You should tell them where can they check that out actually and, yeah, where can people follow you?
You can find MetaGame at, metagame.wtf. And you can find me in Twitter or Telegram at petit, so p e t h e t h. And, yeah, DM's open. Just ask me whatever. Cool. And thank you, guys. Yeah. Thanks, Trevor.