--- title: "The Future of Gaming: Mythical Games CEO Reveals What's Coming Next" episode: 59 podcast: "The LeanScale Podcast" publisher: "LeanScale" guest: "John Linden" guest_title: "CEO of Mythical Games" date_published: 2026-05-15 date_modified: 2026-07-22 duration: 00:47:44 word_count: 9941 topics: ["gtm-strategy", "brand-positioning", "ai-in-gtm", "pricing-packaging"] canonical_url: https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/podcast/john-linden-future-of-gaming/ source: "LeanScale Podcast Knowledge Hub — https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app" license: "Free to quote and cite with attribution to The LeanScale Podcast." --- # The Future of Gaming: Mythical Games CEO Reveals What's Coming Next _John Linden on player-owned economies, product-market fit, and building with AI from day one_ **Episode 59 · The LeanScale Podcast** John Linden, CEO of Mythical Games · Hosted by Anthony Enrico Published May 15, 2026 · Updated July 22, 2026 · 00:47:44 Canonical: https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/podcast/john-linden-future-of-gaming/ **Topics:** GTM Strategy · Brand & Positioning · AI in GTM · Pricing & Packaging ## Executive summary John Linden is the CEO and co-founder of Mythical Games, a studio building 'player-owned economies' — games where digital assets carry real ownership and can be traded safely and securely on blockchain rails. Before Mythical he was a studio head at Activision (working on Call of Duty), president of Seismic Games, and sold a mobile studio to Niantic. He started programming at eight on a Commodore 64, wrote laser-projection software for his father's company at fourteen, and dropped out of the University of Kansas at nineteen to run a venture-backed startup later acquired by the founders of Myspace. In this LeanScale Podcast conversation with Anthony Enrico, he delivers a founder's clinic on product-market fit, go-to-market fit, monetization, and building with AI from day one. The origin thesis came from a moment of self-surprise. In 2017, John dropped $600 on CryptoKitties — 2D images of cats — and immediately asked himself why. The answer reframed his career: for the first time, as a consumer, he could truly decide what to do with a digital asset — sell it, gift it, play with it, or destroy it. That shift in behavior, plus a generation for whom 'digital identity is as important as physical identity' (a Spotify playlist matters the way a CD collection once did), became Mythical's bet: bring player-owned economies into mainstream games without forcing players to learn crypto. The middle of the conversation is a working model of finding fit twice. Mythical's first title, Blankos Block Party, was rejected by Google and Apple and took 18 months to reach the Epic Games Store, but a passionate community proved the concept. The real inflection was the NFL license — validation from a famously conservative brand — followed by NFL Rivals earning a higher App Store rating than Madden, EA's four-decade incumbent, despite predictions it would be 'review-bombed.' That was product-market fit. Go-to-market fit came from making the motion repeatable and, crucially, from monetization: trading rose from 20% to 50% of revenue after 'quick trade,' a cashless, multi-legged liquidity model that meets how gamers actually swap items rather than forcing a financial bid/ask market on them. John frames the whole progression as a laddering approach — crypto, credit card, cashless trade, and now an AI NPC negotiator — where each on-ramp pulls a new persona into the economy. On AI, John is bullish but sober. Mythical rebuilt its next-generation marketplace tech with AI from day one; done right, 'almost every employee becomes like three,' each paired with a code reviewer, a junior programmer, and a security analyst. Experienced people get the biggest lift — a seasoned artist prompting generative tools far outperforms a novice — and developers pit models against each other, writing code with Claude and having ChatGPT critique it 'like a security compliance officer.' AI can single-handedly own bounded problems like a standalone smart contract, but not multi-connected game systems, so teams siphon work accordingly. When players started writing their own trading bots against the marketplace, Mythical decided to productize the behavior: give every player an AI NPC that negotiates trades on their objectives. John's macro view is that AI will separate the workforce the way computers once did — a divider between those who adopt and those who hold out. What's next is a shift from game maker to game infrastructure provider, organized around three pillars: economic tech (largely built), social interaction (the forthcoming Pulse Arena tournament system with contract-verified stakes), and opening the platform so outside studios build on Mythical's stack. With roughly 10 million funded wallets today and a projected 50–100 million within twelve months on the back of FIFA and the 2026 World Cup, John plans to onboard five to seven external games next year. He closes with hard-won fundraising wisdom: rejection is usually about fit, not quality — 'it's not a bad idea, it's just not the idea they have' — and the single most valuable founder skill is selling the vision to employees, customers, and investors alike. Who should listen: founders navigating the jump from product-market fit to repeatable go-to-market in a new category, GTM and product leaders designing consumer monetization, and anyone who wants a grounded, non-hype read on AI inside a real operating company. ## Key takeaways 1. **Build for a real consumer problem, not the technology** — Mythical deliberately never led with 'crypto' or a get-rich-quick token. John insisted on a genuine product-market fit — 'Is there a real value and real need for this?' — and brought trading into traditional games with $4–$20 items so players never need to understand blockchain to participate. _Why it matters:_ Lead with consumer empathy and the problem you solve, not the novel tech. In an emerging category, positioning around ownership and fun beats positioning around the underlying rails. _For:_ Founders, Marketing Leaders, Revenue Executives 2. **Digital identity is now a buying driver** — John argues a generation treats digital identity as seriously as physical identity — a Spotify playlist carries the meaning a CD collection once did, which is why people spend in Fortnite and Roblox. Player-owned assets let people express who they are and, increasingly, act entrepreneurially inside virtual worlds. _Why it matters:_ For consumer products, ownership, expression, and belonging are the emotional hooks. Frame monetization around identity and control rather than speculation. _For:_ Marketing Leaders, Founders 3. **Read early signals when there's no benchmark data** — Trailblazing a new category means no industry benchmarks to lean on. Mythical's confidence came from three qualitative signals: a passionate community that felt ownership, validation from a conservative marquee brand (the NFL), and beating the incumbent on the metric that mattered — NFL Rivals outrated Madden in the App Store across ~250,000 reviews. _Why it matters:_ When you can't benchmark, triangulate: community passion, credible brand validation, and a head-to-head win on a metric customers actually see. Those signals justify pressing the accelerator. _For:_ Founders, Revenue Executives 4. **Product-market fit first, then go-to-market fit, then a dynasty** — John (and Anthony) separate the stages cleanly: prove real fit once, then make the motion repeatable so you can win 'again and again' — a dynasty, not one hot-team championship. Mythical proved the formula on NFL Rivals, then saw the same 20%-to-50% trading pattern repeat on the next title. _Why it matters:_ Don't confuse a single win with a repeatable engine. The job after PMF is to codify the formula and confirm it reproduces on the next product, segment, or brand. _For:_ Founders, Revenue Executives 5. **Reduce friction to widen the paying base — 'quick trade' took trading to 50% of revenue** — Free-to-play games convert only 4–5% of players to any spend, and few will put $200 on a card for a digital asset. Mythical's 'quick trade' let players swap items cashlessly — the system real-time-buys from one seller and sells your unwanted items to buyers worldwide, using ~50,000 open orders to price roughly 85% of assets live. Trading rose from 20% to 50% of revenue. _Why it matters:_ The biggest monetization unlocks often come from removing friction for the 95% who won't pull out a card, not from squeezing the 5% who will. Design the mechanic around cashless value exchange. _For:_ Revenue Executives, Founders, Marketing Leaders 6. **Meet customers where their behavior already is** — Gamers have traded for decades, but not like financial traders — it's not bid/ask and floor prices, it's 'I'll take these two and give you these three,' a liquidity mindset. Mythical engineered quick trade and, next, an AI NPC that phones you in-game to negotiate, so trading feels native and fun rather than like a marketplace. _Why it matters:_ Study how customers already behave and design the product to match that instinct. Forcing a familiar-to-you model onto a different-behaving audience kills adoption. _For:_ Founders, Marketing Leaders, Revenue Executives 7. **AI is a force multiplier for experts, not a replacement** — Integrated properly, 'almost every employee becomes like three' — each paired with a code reviewer, junior programmer, and security analyst. But experienced people get the biggest lift: a seasoned artist prompting generative tools far outperforms a novice, and John is explicit that you're not yet at 'make this system go and check back in two days.' _Why it matters:_ Put AI in expert hands and treat it as leverage on skilled people, not a substitute for them. The productivity gain compounds fastest where deep craft already exists. _For:_ Founders, RevOps Leaders, Revenue Executives 8. **Rebuild with AI from day one — and use models to challenge each other** — After seven years, Mythical chose to build its next-gen marketplace tech from scratch with AI baked in from the start, steered by senior people asking 'what are we actually trying to solve?' Developers write code with Claude and have ChatGPT analyze it 'like a security compliance officer,' getting the models to battle each other for better, safer output. _Why it matters:_ Greenfield with AI beats retrofitting it, and multi-model adversarial review raises quality and security. Keep senior humans defining the paradigm so AI serves clear engineering goals. _For:_ Founders, RevOps Leaders 9. **Productize the emergent behavior your users invent** — Mythical noticed marketplace growth from single users and discovered players were writing their own AI trading bots to hunt specific cards. Rather than fight it, they decided to open the system up and give every player a built-in AI NPC that trades on their stated objectives. _Why it matters:_ When power users hack your product to do something valuable, that's a roadmap. Democratize the behavior instead of shutting it down. _For:_ Founders, Revenue Executives 10. **Land the platform after you've pulled the levers yourself** — Mythical built its own games (Blankos, NFL Rivals, Pudgy Party, FIFA Rivals) rather than opening the platform first, because making a game, shifting its paradigm, and running the fintech behind it are each hard — no one would know how to build on it. Only after doing it four times and gathering data are they opening the stack, targeting five to seven external games next year. _Why it matters:_ Earn the right to platform. Operate the hard motion yourself until you understand which levers to tune, then open it up as infrastructure. _For:_ Founders, Revenue Executives 11. **Fundraising rejection is about fit, not quality** — John compares pitching VCs to acting auditions — you get told no a lot, often because the investor already has a different vision or a specific 'deal box' they promised their LPs. 'It's not a bad idea, it's just not the idea they have.' The answer is persistence and finding aligned investors, employees, and customers. _Why it matters:_ Don't read every no as a verdict on the idea. Optimize for vision alignment across investors, hires, and customers — and treat selling that vision as your most important founder skill. _For:_ Founders ## Frameworks ### Product-Market Fit → Go-to-Market Fit → Dynasty (16:13) **Definition:** A three-stage progression: prove genuine product-market fit once (a real problem, consumer-first), then achieve go-to-market fit by making the motion repeatable, then scale it into a 'dynasty' rather than a single lucky win. John proved PMF when NFL Rivals outrated Madden with a passionate community, then looked for the repeatable formula — and saw the same 20%-to-50% trading pattern reproduce on the next title. Anthony frames the leap as moving from 'winning one championship because we had a hot team' to 'turning this into a dynasty.' ### Consumer-First, Not Tech-First (09:39) **Definition:** Build around a real consumer problem and behavior, deliberately not leading with the novel technology (crypto/blockchain) or a get-rich-quick token. Mythical brought trading into traditional games with $4–$20 items so players never need to know crypto. Sticking to this even when told they'd be 'review-bombed' produced a loyal community and a higher rating than the incumbent. ### Quick Trade (Cashless Multi-Legged Liquidity Model) (17:26) **Definition:** A trading mechanic where a player offers unwanted items for a desired one; the system real-time-buys the target from one seller and real-time-sells the offered items to multiple buyers worldwide, netting a cashless swap. Using ~50,000 open orders at any second to price roughly 85% of assets live, quick trade meets how gamers actually trade (liquidity swaps, not bid/ask). It lifted trading from 20% to 50% of revenue by unlocking the 95% who won't put $200 on a credit card. ### The Laddering Approach to Adoption (21:37) **Definition:** Layering successive, lower-friction on-ramps into the economy — crypto, then credit card, then cashless quick trade, then an AI NPC negotiator — so each new rung pulls a broader persona into trading. Anthony names it the 'laddering approach': each innovation reduces friction and brings more people in, and once they participate they get interested in richer forms of trading. It's how Mythical moved from crypto-native early adopters toward the mass market. ### Ownership Evolution: Closed → Shared → Full Player Control (33:10) **Definition:** A staged handover of asset control from the studio to the player: start closed (assets exist but access is tightly controlled), move to shared responsibility ('you have a key, I have a key'), then to full player control (take it and go, even revoke the game's access). John frames Mythical's next phase as reaching full player ownership, enabled by UIs finally easy enough (MetaMask, Google/Apple/phone logins) and by opening the marketplace so anyone can list items and let them flow naturally. ### AI Force Multiplier: Every Employee Becomes Three (24:31) **Definition:** When AI is integrated properly into how code is deployed and how engineers work, each person effectively gains a code reviewer, a junior programmer, and a security analyst — roughly tripling their output. Experienced people get the biggest lift, and AI can single-handedly own bounded problems (a standalone smart contract) but not multi-connected game systems. The gain is reinvested to move faster, and every team is challenged to answer 'how can AI make your job better?' ### Multi-Model Adversarial Development (26:11) **Definition:** Using different AI models to challenge each other's work — e.g., writing a piece of code with Claude and having ChatGPT analyze it in the role of a security compliance officer. Getting models to 'battle each other' surfaces different approaches and catches issues one model alone would miss, raising both quality and security in Mythical's development process. ### The Three Pillars of Mythical (34:17) **Definition:** Mythical's build sequence: (1) economic tech — changing the economies inside games; (2) social interaction — new ways for players to compete and play together (Pulse Arena tournaments); (3) open platform — letting outside studios build on Mythical's stack. Having largely dominated the first pillar, Mythical is launching the social layer (contract-verified stakes where 'the game is the Oracle') and opening its infrastructure, shifting from game maker to game infrastructure provider. ### It's Not You, It's Them (Fundraising Fit) (44:46) **Definition:** A reframe of investor rejection: a no usually reflects the VC's own vision or their LP-mandated 'deal box,' not a flaw in the idea — 'it's not a bad idea, it's just not the idea they have.' John likens pitching to acting auditions where you're told no a lot, and prescribes persistence plus finding aligned investors, employees, and customers. Selling the vision is, in his view, a founder's most valuable skill. ## Quotes _Speakers inferred from an undiarized transcript — verify before attributing._ > "Next thing I know, I dropped $600 on 2D images of cats. And I'm like, why did I do that? What happened there?" > > — John Linden, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 59 (02:58) > "We're seeing a generation where digital identity is as important as physical identity." > > — John Linden, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 59 (04:52) > "What we've been very good at doing is making sure there's a solid product-market fit. Is there a real value and real need for this?" > > — John Linden, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 59 (09:39) > "You don't need to know crypto. You're not spending hundreds of thousands of dollars. These are $20 items, $10 items, $4 items. But you let people start trading and interacting with each other." > > — John Linden, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 59 (14:23) > "We're sitting at a higher rating than even Madden was. To me, that was the moment I felt like we had the right product-market fit." > > — John Linden, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 59 (13:22) > "We added a concept we called quick trade, and now we started seeing 50% of the revenue was coming from trading." > > — John Linden, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 59 (17:26) > "They're trading with millions of other people around the world without really realizing it. It's just a fun part of that experience." > > — John Linden, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 59 (21:37) > "If you integrate it properly into everything — from how you deploy code to how the engineers think about it — almost every employee becomes like three." > > — John Linden, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 59 (24:31) > "One of the things our developers found is using different AIs to challenge each other — writing a piece of code with Claude, and then having ChatGPT analyze that code like a security compliance officer." > > — John Linden, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 59 (26:11) > "They were writing their own AI trading bots. And we decided, well, why don't we just give everybody that?" > > — John Linden, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 59 (27:13) > "A mathematician can use a calculator much better than I can. If you have an expert using a tool, it just makes them more efficient, more powerful." > > — Anthony Enrico, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 59 (28:22) > "It's going to separate people. It's almost like computers — there was a time some people knew computers and some people never touched a computer." > > — John Linden, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 59 (30:10) > "We have 10 million wallets now that have some form of funding in our chain system... I think it'll probably be 50 to 100 million wallets within 12 months." > > — John Linden, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 59 (36:52) > "You're going to see us move from being a game maker to more of a game infrastructure provider." > > — John Linden, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 59 (37:25) > "It's not a bad idea. It's just not the idea they have. You've got to keep being persistent and finding the people that also share that vision." > > — John Linden, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 59 (44:46) > "Sharing and selling that vision, to whoever that audience is, is probably one of the best skills you can develop as an entrepreneur." > > — John Linden, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 59 (45:17) ## Practical advice by role ### Founders - Anchor on a real consumer problem and build consumer-first — don't lead with the novel tech or a get-rich-quick token. Mythical brought trading into traditional games with $4–$20 items so nobody needs to understand crypto. - When you have no benchmark data, triangulate signals: a passionate community, validation from a credible (ideally conservative) brand, and a head-to-head win on a metric customers see — NFL Rivals outrating Madden. - Separate the stages: prove product-market fit once, then make it repeatable (go-to-market fit), then scale into a dynasty. Confirm the formula reproduces on the next product before you pour fuel on it. - Rebuild with AI from day one where it helps, but keep senior people defining the paradigm and know how the system was built so you can fix it. - Treat fundraising rejection as fit, not quality — 'it's not you, it's them.' Keep pitching until you find aligned investors, hires, and customers, and treat selling the vision as your core skill. ### Revenue Executives - Chase the friction, not just the whales: the biggest monetization unlock (quick trade, 20%→50% of revenue) came from a cashless mechanic for the 95% who won't put $200 on a card. - Design monetization around how customers actually behave — gamers trade in liquidity swaps, not bid/ask — and add successive on-ramps so each rung pulls in a new persona. - Earn the right to platform: run the hard motion yourself until you understand which levers to tune, then open it up as infrastructure to others. ### Marketing Leaders - Position around ownership, identity, and belonging — digital identity now drives spend (Fortnite, Roblox, Spotify playlists) — not around speculation or the underlying technology. - Court a conservative marquee brand for category validation; the NFL license de-risked player-owned economies in a way no amount of self-promotion could. ### RevOps Leaders - Challenge every team to answer 'how can AI make your job better?' — from customer service and trust & safety to fraud analysts and engineers — and reinvest the productivity gain in going faster. - Use multi-model adversarial workflows (one model authors, another reviews as a security/compliance officer) and keep humans in the loop; AI needs oversight and clean, well-understood systems to be reliable. ## AI takeaways **Thesis:** AI is a force multiplier for skilled humans, not a replacement — Mythical rebuilt its next-gen stack with AI from day one, pits models against each other, and turned emergent user AI-bots into a product. Adoption, not automation, is what separates winners. - **Every employee becomes three** — Integrated properly, each person effectively gains a code reviewer, a junior programmer, and a security analyst. The gain is reinvested to move faster, not banked as headcount reduction. - **Experts get the biggest lift** — A seasoned artist prompting generative tools far outperforms a novice; the productivity multiplier compounds where deep craft already exists. Put AI in expert hands. - **Multi-model adversarial dev** — Write code with Claude, have ChatGPT critique it 'like a security compliance officer,' and let the models battle each other for better, safer output. - **Match AI to the problem's shape** — AI can single-handedly own bounded problems like a standalone smart contract, but not multi-connected game systems — siphon work to where it's reliable. - **Productize emergent behavior** — Players wrote their own AI trading bots, so Mythical is opening the system and giving every player an in-game AI NPC that negotiates trades on their objectives. - **AI is a workforce divider** — Like computers before it, AI will separate those who adopt from those who hold out. John challenges every team — support, trust & safety, fraud, engineering — to make AI make their job better. **Agent & automation ideas** - A per-player AI NPC negotiator that trades assets on a user's stated objectives (which players/cards to collect) against a live marketplace order book. - An accessible marketplace API that lets power users write their own AI trading bots (via Claude or ChatGPT) with rules like 'acquire every Kansas City Chiefs asset as it lists.' - An AI-assisted game-dev pipeline spanning concept art, marketing copy, and code deployment, with a security-analyst agent embedded in the workflow. - A multi-model review harness where one model authors code and another critiques it as a compliance/security officer before merge. ## Metrics mentioned | Value | Metric | Context | | --- | --- | --- | | $600 on CryptoKitties | First NFT purchase | John's own out-of-character spend on 2D cat images in 2017 — the aha moment that consumer ownership changes behavior. | | ~250,000 reviews | NFL Rivals App Store reviews | The game is rated higher than Madden across roughly a quarter-million App Store reviews — the metric John treats as proof of product-market fit. | | 18 months | Epic Games Store approval | How long it took to get Mythical's first player-owned-economy game (Blankos) onto the Epic Games Store after Google and Apple declined. | | 20% → 50% | Trading share of revenue | Trading started at ~20% of revenue and rose to ~50% after 'quick trade' — the cashless, multi-legged liquidity mechanic. | | 4–5% | Free-to-play conversion | A great free-to-play game converts only 4–5% of players to any paid spend, so ~95% never pay — the constraint quick trade was built to route around. | | ~50,000 open orders / ~85% priced | Live order book | At any given second NFL Rivals has ~50,000 open orders, enough to price roughly 85% of assets in real time and power cashless trades. | | 10M today → 50–100M in 12 months | Funded wallets | Mythical has ~10 million funded wallets on its chain system, projected to reach 50–100 million within a year on the back of FIFA and the 2026 World Cup. | | 5–7 next year | External games planned | As Mythical opens its stack, John plans to onboard five to seven outside games building on its infrastructure next year. | | $500 at age 14 | First paid coding job | John wrote laser-projection show software (used by clients like Dell for ESPN) for his father's company at fourteen — his first taste of building for money. | | 35 employees at 19, top-50 website (1997) | First startup scale | John dropped out of college to run a venture-backed alumni site with 35 employees at nineteen; it became a top-50 website before being acquired by the founders of Myspace. | ## Entities mentioned - **Mythical Games** (company) — John's company; a studio building player-owned economies (NFL Rivals, FIFA Rivals, Blankos Block Party, Pudgy Party) that is shifting from game maker to game infrastructure provider. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/company/mythical-games/ - **Activision** (company) — Where John was a studio head working on Call of Duty; also where he invented QR-coded Skylanders trading cards scannable in 50 milliseconds. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/company/activision-blizzard/ - **Seismic Games** (company) — Game studio John led as president before founding Mythical Games. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/company/seismic-games/ - **Niantic** (company) — Acquired John's mobile game studio, giving him a front-row view of the console-to-mobile shift. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/company/niantic/ - **Epic Games** (company) — The Epic Games Store became the first storefront to host Mythical's player-owned-economy title (Blankos), after an 18-month approval process, once Google and Apple declined. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/company/epic-games/ - **National Football League (NFL)** (company) — A famously conservative marquee brand whose license (NFL Rivals) was the pivotal validation moment signaling Mythical had product-market fit. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/company/nfl/ - **Electronic Arts (EA)** (company) — Publisher of Madden NFL, the four-decade incumbent American-football franchise; NFL Rivals earned a higher App Store rating than Madden. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/company/electronic-arts/ - **Apple** (company) — Initially declined Mythical's player-owned economy; later, App Store ratings and ~250,000 reviews on NFL Rivals became the key PMF signal. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/company/apple/ - **Google** (company) — With Apple, initially rejected Mythical's first player-owned-economy game amid the early allergic reaction to 'crypto.' · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/company/google/ - **Coinbase** (company) — Cited as the analog for what Mythical is doing — the platform that made buying and holding crypto safe and accessible to mainstream users. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/company/coinbase/ - **Myspace** (company) — Its founders acquired John's first venture-backed startup, a late-1990s alumni-networking website that reached top-50 status. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/company/myspace/ - **University of Kansas** (company) — Where John studied before dropping out as a sophomore at nineteen to run his venture-backed company with 35 employees. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/company/university-of-kansas/ - **Chuck E. Cheese** (company) — Family entertainment/arcade chain (formerly Showbiz Pizza) where John's father was head of engineering, immersing him in animatronics and arcades as a child. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/company/chuck-e-cheese/ - **John Linden** (person, guest) — CEO and co-founder of Mythical Games, building player-owned game economies; former Activision studio head (Call of Duty) and serial gaming entrepreneur. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/guest/john-linden/ - **Anthony Enrico** (person, host) — Co-founder of LeanScale and host of The LeanScale Podcast. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/guest/anthony-enrico/ - **Claude** (tool, AI Assistant) — Used by Mythical developers to write code, then paired against ChatGPT in a multi-model adversarial review workflow. - **ChatGPT** (tool, AI Assistant) — Used to analyze Claude-written code 'like a security compliance officer,' getting the models to challenge each other. - **Claude Code** (tool, AI Dev Tool) — Referenced ('cloud code') as the AI tooling John pushed set-in-their-ways engineers to put into their work streams for personal development and efficiency. - **MetaMask** (tool, Crypto Wallet) — Cited as an example of a self-custody wallet login now easy enough to let players take full ownership of their in-game assets. ## FAQ **Q: What are 'player-owned economies' and what does Mythical Games do?** A: Player-owned economies are games where in-game digital assets carry real ownership — players can buy, sell, gift, or trade them safely and securely on blockchain rails rather than through shady third-party sites. Mythical Games, led by CEO John Linden, builds these experiences (NFL Rivals, FIFA Rivals, Blankos Block Party, Pudgy Party) and is opening its economic and trading tech stack for outside studios to build on. **Q: How did Mythical Games know it had product-market fit for NFL Rivals?** A: With no industry benchmarks to lean on, Mythical triangulated qualitative signals: a passionate community that felt real ownership, validation from a famously conservative brand in the NFL, and beating the four-decade incumbent on a metric customers see — NFL Rivals earned a higher App Store rating than Madden across roughly 250,000 reviews, despite predictions it would be 'review-bombed.' **Q: What is 'quick trade' and why did it matter?** A: Quick trade is a cashless, multi-legged trading mechanic: a player offers unwanted items for a desired one, and Mythical's system real-time-buys the target from one seller while real-time-selling the offered items to buyers worldwide. Using around 50,000 open orders to price about 85% of assets live, it matched how gamers actually trade and lifted trading from about 20% to 50% of revenue by unlocking the ~95% of players who won't put $200 on a credit card. **Q: How is Mythical Games using AI internally?** A: Mythical uses AI on two fronts: production (concept art, marketing, copy — with experts getting the biggest lift) and engineering. It rebuilt its next-gen marketplace tech with AI from day one, so that 'almost every employee becomes like three,' each paired with a code reviewer, junior programmer, and security analyst. Developers also pit models against each other — writing code with Claude and having ChatGPT critique it like a security compliance officer. **Q: Does John Linden think AI will replace game developers?** A: No — his view is sober. AI is a force multiplier for skilled people, not a replacement, and you can't yet tell it to 'make this system' and check back in two days. He believes AI will separate the workforce the way computers once did — a divider between those who adopt it and those who hold out — and he challenges every team to figure out how AI can make their job better. **Q: What is next for Mythical Games?** A: Mythical is shifting from game maker to game infrastructure provider across three pillars: economic tech (largely built), social interaction (the forthcoming Pulse Arena tournament system with contract-verified stakes), and an open platform for outside studios. With roughly 10 million funded wallets today and a projected 50–100 million within a year on the back of FIFA and the 2026 World Cup, it plans to onboard five to seven external games next year. **Q: What is John Linden's advice for founders raising money?** A: Treat rejection as a matter of fit, not quality. Pitching VCs is like an acting audition — you get told no a lot, often because the investor already has a different vision or a specific 'deal box' they promised their LPs. As John puts it, 'it's not a bad idea, it's just not the idea they have.' Stay persistent, find aligned investors, employees, and customers, and treat selling the vision as your most valuable founder skill. **Q: Why did Mythical build its own games before opening its platform?** A: Making a game, shifting its paradigm, and running the fintech behind it are each hard, so opening the platform first would have left developers with no idea how to use it. Mythical built its own titles to learn which levers to pull and tune, and only after doing it four times and gathering data is it opening the stack — targeting five to seven external games next year. ## Timeline - **00:00** — Intro: John Linden and Mythical Games - **00:41** — The founder's aha: $600 of CryptoKitties - **04:52** — Digital identity and the new player-owned economy - **08:24** — Reading early signals with no benchmark data - **09:39** — Product-market fit: solve a real problem - **11:39** — The NFL license and outrating Madden - **16:13** — From product-market fit to go-to-market fit - **17:26** — Quick trade: lifting trading to 50% of revenue - **22:15** — How Mythical uses AI in development - **24:31** — Rebuilding from scratch with AI from day one - **26:11** — Multi-model adversarial development - **26:43** — User-built trading bots become an AI NPC - **28:22** — AI as a force multiplier, not a replacement - **32:36** — What's next: opening up ownership - **34:17** — Three pillars: economy, social, and platform - **34:48** — Pulse Arena and social tournaments - **35:47** — Becoming a game infrastructure provider - **38:45** — Origin story: Chuck E. Cheese to Commodore 64 - **40:36** — Dropping out at 19 to run a venture-backed startup - **43:43** — Fundraising: it's not you, it's them - **46:27** — Close ## Related episodes - **Ep. 23: Don't Just Build Software, Solve the Problem** (Dan Friedman) — The same consumer-first, solve-a-real-problem discipline John used to find product-market fit against the tech-first temptation. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/podcast/dan-friedman-moxie-solve-the-problem/ - **Ep. 26: Avoid These Founder Red Flags: A VC's Honest Perspective** (Sophie Buonassisi) — The investor side of John's 'it's not you, it's them' fundraising lesson — vision fit and deal-box constraints, not idea quality. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/podcast/sophie-buonassisi-founder-red-flags/ - **Ep. 33: Why AI Won't Save Your Bad Brand** (Mario Paganini) — Brand-positioning counterpart to John's NFL validation and his sober, non-hype view of what AI can and can't do. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/podcast/mario-paganini-ai-wont-save-brand/ - **Ep. 48: The Operator's Guide to Building a Go-to-Market Engine** (Justin St. Louis-Wood) — Companion to John's product-market-fit-to-go-to-market-fit progression and making the motion repeatable. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/podcast/justin-st-louis-wood-go-to-market-engine/ - **Ep. 91: Why Outcome-Based Pricing Is a Trap for Most AI Companies** (Roee Hartuv) — Pricing and monetization counterpart to Mythical's trading/revenue-share model and the friction-reduction that lifted trading to 50% of revenue. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/podcast/roee-hartuv-outcome-based-pricing-trap/ - **Ep. 95: Why AI Means More RevOps Hires, Not Fewer** (Jimmy O'Halloran) — Directly echoes John's 'AI makes people stronger, every employee becomes three' — productivity gains grow teams rather than replace them. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/podcast/jimmy-ohalloran-new-relic-revops-consumption-revenue/ ## Full transcript _Machine-transcribed and not diarized; speaker attribution is inferred._ _Transcript only, as a separate file: https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/podcast/john-linden-future-of-gaming/transcript.md_ ### 00:00 — Intro: John Linden and Mythical Games **[0:00]** Joining us is John Linden, CEO of Mythical Games, a studio that isn't just making games but building player-owned economies, where digital assets, true ownership, and immersive gameplay combine to form a whole new frontier. Prior to Mythical, John led at big-time game franchises. He was the president of Seismic Games and before that served as studio head at Activision Blizzard, working on one of my personal favorites, Call of Duty. John, such a cool background, love what you're doing with Mythical, and so excited that you made some time to be on The LeanScale Podcast today. ### 00:41 — The founder's aha: $600 of CryptoKitties **[0:41]** I just think you've had an amazing career, you've built an amazing company, and I always think, you know, to kick things off, I always love hearing the founder's story of what gave you that "aha" moment and what gave you the confidence and passion to just go all in and make it happen. Yeah, well, first of all, thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Appreciate it. Are you having me on here? Yeah, like I said, I've had a very interesting career for sure, but I think what we're doing at Mythical is definitely one of the biggest highlights of my career. **[1:15]** You know, I've been in gaming for a long time now, so I got to see, I was very fortunate, I got thrown right into PC console back in the day in kind of the 2010s, and you know, it was kind of a heyday at the time for Call of Duty. I guess you could still argue it's still the heyday for Call of Duty. I think it's still doing great. **[1:32]** Yeah, it was great. Yeah, it's still doing okay. But it was it was great. It was great seeing that, you know, I've been an entrepreneur several times before that, but it was kind of coming into the gaming world was very just very fulfilling for me, you know, it was really like the symphony of people that would come together to make these projects. **[1:50]** And so I, you know, got the bug and, you know, probably will never leave gaming ever, to be honest with you. But, you know, it was interesting to see and seeing kind of the height of PC console, I shifted over to mobile games for a little while, I had a great mobile game studio that we ended up selling to Niantic, got to see a different shift now, kind of, you know, same world, but different, different, you know, we were mostly mobile phones and a whole different kind of experience. **[2:13]** And, you know, and then suddenly, this thing happened in like 2016 2017, you know, I've been thinking about trading in games, I love these economies where people can trade with each other. And we've had it, you know, people find a way, to be honest with you, say what we've done in mythical is not necessarily the first time anybody's ever traded a digital asset. **[2:29]** It's just probably the rails are there now to safely and securely trade. But we've been seeing trading happening in games like World of Warcraft and EverQuest, and people are using shady websites to kind of trade and all this type of stuff. But in 2017, basically, these things called crypto kitties came out. And, you know, it was interesting for me, this was a big moment for me, because, you know, I'm not a whale in games, personally, I'll, I'll spend a few, you know, $30, $40 to maybe support a game or support a game developer, but I've never wanted to spend time with them. **[2:58]** But I've never wanted to spend thousands of dollars in a game before. And then these things, crypto kitties came out. And next thing I know, I dropped $600 on 2D images of cats. And I'm like, why did I do that? Like, what happened there? And that was really, it was honestly, one of the first aha moments for me is like, oh, for me, it was a different behavior, right? It was something that I had the benefit of as a consumer to decide what I want to do. I could give it away. I could play with it. I could burn it and destroy it. I could sell it at a profit. I could sell it at a loss. **[3:27]** But it was my decision. And that was a big moment. It was also a very difficult experience to do that back in 2016, to even, you know, kind of deal with this. But that was kind of that moment of like, it was really that aha moment of like, okay, this is how we solve the trading issue in games, right? And so I viewed it as kind of this amazing opportunity. Like, one is it is the shift in consumer behavior, which I love to watch for. But also, I think honestly, the other part too is it was scary as hell to do it. You know, you kind of like hit the button and hold your breath for two minutes while hoping it shows up on the other side. **[4:00]** So it was such early technology, but it was so powerful. And so that's really, we had had this idea and like, you know, let's go head first into this thing, because I think this is the concept of how we take this love of collecting. You know, I was a big baseball card collector when I was a kid or comic book collecting or whatever. And this was the digital equivalent, right? And that was really, really exciting. And that's how we kind of jumped head first into mythical to get this thing off the ground. **[4:25]** No, I love that. I love that. And I do think a lot of people think of it as, you know, hey, are these real assets? Like, hey, yes, absolutely. Like, if you're looking at art, if you're looking at what your what your players wearing or what equipment you have, things like that, like, it's, it's, you know, people spend a good amount of their time and lives like immersed in these games and be able to have control over that experience and customize it to themselves is really powerful. ### 04:52 — Digital identity and the new player-owned economy **[4:52]** That's right. And I think what you're seeing too is, I mean, we're seeing a generation where digital identity is as important as physical identity, right? And it really becomes an important part. You know, my, I have two grown kids now, but, you know, their Spotify playlist, which they don't even own, right? Is as important to their identity as like Arca set or CD collections were back in the day, right? And even though it's digital, it still has that same meaning. And I think that's where gaming is really big. I mean, that's why people buy all this stuff in Fortnite and Roblox and all these types of things. **[5:21]** Is because it is part of who they are, you know, and it allows them to express who they are. And on top of that, I think we're starting to see a whole new economy really emerge. You know, people have talked about the creator economy for a long time. Obviously, we've mostly seen that in like the YouTubes and the TikToks and things like that. **[5:37]** But I think what we're starting to see now is we're starting to see kind of the birth of a new economy to where anybody can now create and the rails are there to actually figure out how you want to do it. It's almost like this new business development layer sitting, you know, sitting in these virtual worlds. And I think that's where it starts to get really exciting is that once you open this up and this is not a single country opportunity, right? This is an actual big global economy opportunity to where people in different parts of the world now can interact seamlessly with other people and know the rules, right? **[6:07]** That's what I do love about the whole concept of like a blockchain technology is you know the rules, right? You can read the rules, you know, and you're not really at the whim of somebody else changing those rules on you necessarily. So I think it's an exciting time. It's something we've been very passionate about at Mythical. It's, you know, we've been doing this now for seven years, you know, so it's been a while. And there's been lots of headwinds for sure. Again, I think we jumped in pretty early. **[6:32]** But I think, you know, we've been very persistent. And I think we've been making just tons of tons of great progress. And again, I think we're still at that 0.1% of what we're able to accomplish as an industry. And you got to remember the gaming industry is already, you know, 250 billion plus industry, but it's really owned by, you know, a handful of players. And I think what this starts doing and building this in an open fashion, it's going to start opening a whole new series of a set of size of the industry. **[6:58]** But again, it's going to really power that consumer over time to where they actually can almost become entrepreneurial in their own ways within a digital world. I love it. I love it. And I really like the guardrails and the safety component of it, too, because I remember like when cryptocurrency started to gain some traction, you know, it wasn't very easy to buy and collect. **[7:20]** And it wasn't a safe way to get Bitcoin or other early cryptocurrencies. But then when services like Coinbase came out, then all of a sudden, it's like, OK, you had a system, you had a platform that made it easy, made it, you know, more accessible for people to kind of get into that economy. And I love that what you're doing is, one, giving people access, but also making it safe and, you know, people an opportunity to partake. And I think that's yeah, that's definitely the goals. I said I was pretty early in the days and it was it was scary. **[7:53]** I mean, I've had things I feel like I'm a pretty advanced user of the whole Web three world, but I've had I've had wall attacks. I've had things stolen from a wallet before. Right. So it's it's definitely been it's it's it's becoming better. Right. But it is kind of I think anytime you have programmatic money effectively, you're going to have a lot of shady people kind of trying to exploit that. And so I think there have been a lot of challenges, but I do think you're right. I think it's really providing consumers an easy way to understand it, but also a very safe and secure way to do it as well. ### 08:24 — Reading early signals with no benchmark data **[8:24]** Yeah. Yeah. I personally work with a lot of early stage founders and a lot of the founders that I work with are they're trailblazing new industries, new approaches. And I think something that a lot of us might struggle with is knowing if you're getting the traction and when to start to accelerate because usually you're building something that doesn't have a lot of market data, industry data, benchmark data. You can just go pull from you have to really just kind of use the signals you're getting in front of you in the early days of mythical. **[9:00]** What were some of those early signals that you took that gave you confidence to say, hey, yes, let's accelerate. Let's double down. Let's keep going. And how did you guide those decision making processes? Yeah, that's great. Great question. Well, I think I have rules of what we did, and I also have rules of what we probably shouldn't have done to be super honest with you. This is my fourth company that I've started, and I think what we've been very good at doing is making sure there's a solid product market fit. ### 09:39 — Product-market fit: solve a real problem **[9:39]** What are you doing this for? Is there a real value and real need for this? Is there a real need? And frankly, there's still a lot of people in the gaming industry that don't agree with that, and that's fine. But there's also a lot of people in the gaming industry that are only PC and not mobile and not this. And for us, I think what we found is that we just started seeing some great data, to be really honest with you, early on. So when we first had our first game out, we didn't have even the opportunity to put that game out. Our first game blank goes, and I always love the background because I can kind of point to the right game here. **[10:10]** But our first game blank goes, it was the very first time anybody had really done a player-owned economy quite like we were doing. And I remember we went to Google and Apple, and they're like, "Yeah, no. You're not doing that here. We don't know what you're doing. We don't understand this." And then there was kind of this allergic reaction to even the word "crypto" at the time, and I understand why. I mean, there was a lot of shady stuff. It was all, I think, kind of misaligned early on of profit, profit, profit. **[10:37]** So we kind of kept pushing forward, and we found a partner in Epic, so we were the first game with this type of economy on Epic Game Store. And that took us 18 months, so it took us 18 months to kind of talk through it and what we're doing. And again, it's really not about profiting from these things, right? It's really about the ability to be open, you know? So players can come in, and they can just transact however they want with each other. And I think that was kind of an early indicator for us. And we started seeing, we kind of stuck to that gun. **[11:07]** We were like, "Okay, this is not about kind of, you know, trying to pimp out a token or trying to do this stuff. It was really about, let's build this for consumers and just let them trade." And we started seeing great results from that, right? We started seeing very passionate people. They loved the brands. They loved the idea. They felt like they were part of it. And I think that was probably the best early indicator. And, you know, we did struggle with that game a little bit, right? Those games were expensive. They're hard to market. There's all types of challenges in those early days. But we kept seeing that that community liked it, right? ### 11:39 — The NFL license and outrating Madden **[11:39]** And then we were able to kind of secure the NFL license. And that really was the moment that we were like, "Okay, now we're starting to talk to the big brands." Before, it was our game. It's our brand, our IP. And like I said, it was kind of a mixed results on that game. You know, we were still working to try and redo that game and bring it back because it's still our baby. But then we started getting, like, groups like the NFL. And they started reaching out. And they wanted to try and try and do something. And for us, NFL is, they're such an amazing brand. But they're also very conservative. I mean, they're an incredibly conservative brand, too. **[12:11]** And so the fact that they started coming into the equation, we're like, "Okay, this is feeling good." And I'd say that the next big on growth that really hit us was, you know, we were trying to put out an American football game in a market that there's been a dominant competitor for nearly four decades, right, in Madden and EA. And that was a little scary. We're like, "Okay, we're going to come out in a market that's been dominated by one player and people know what they want in that game. We're going to come out with a different style of game and people can trade. They have blockchain behind it," right? All this, like, scary word, blockchain. **[12:47]** And we basically decided, "Hey, we're going to do this. And if I want to do this," and basically we said, "You know, let's make sure it's a consumer-first experience," right? Make sure it's really about the players and really letting the gamers kind of be able to grow and build and do all that. And my favorite thing of when I felt like it was really ready to start turning on the afterburners is that when our game came out, right, you come out in these app stores and users rate you. You know, you get a rating. And I think right now, to this day, I think we have about 250,000 reviews now on this game, NFL Rivals, in the Apple Store. **[13:22]** And we're sitting at a higher rating than even Madden was, right? And to me, that was the moment, is I felt like we had the right product market fit. If we can go up against somebody that's been around for four decades now and we can actually have a brand new economy, a brand new different style of game that's actually higher rated, we've made that fit, you know? And I think that was a big moment for us. It's like, "Okay, we're doing this. This is right." And it's kind of a weird, maybe a weird indicator, but that was one of our biggest ones. It's like players like this, you know? **[13:50]** And we had a lot of people come out and say, "Oh, you're going to get review bomb. Nobody likes this. Everybody hates this word, NFT or blockchain or whatever." But we just built it with the consumer in mind and people loved it, you know, which is great. And that was one of the earliest indicators. And I think it was also one of our lessons, too, is we kind of stuck to that plan, right? We weren't trying to build a new kind of profit off of these digital assets or which you've seen a lot of the people try and do in our space. We said, "Hey, let's bring it into a traditional game," you know, something that actual consumers can do. **[14:23]** You don't need to know crypto. You're not spending hundreds of thousands of dollars like some of these people do on these items. These are $20 items. You know, they're $10 items. They're $4 items. But you let people start trading and you let them start interacting with each other. And we found that was the real indicator for us of like, "Okay, we're on to something." And we've been very fortunate. We picked up some other great games. We picked up FIFA recently, right? So we have a new FIFA game. We have some other games we haven't quite announced yet, but it is working. **[14:50]** And I think it's working because we actually are kind of changing how that game feels and how you can interact. It's not just about a go-get-rich-quick type situation, which unfortunately, there is a lot in crypto that's focused like that. We didn't play that game. We stayed true to this was what we wanted to do. We wanted to create player-controlled economies, player-owned economies. Yeah, I think going back to the beginning of what you said of, "Hey, focus on solving a real problem. Focus on that end consumer in mind." Building in a genuine, empathetic way for who that persona is, **[15:26]** I think is a recipe to build something really great in the beginning. Also, I'm going to try to translate for anyone who might not be fully in gaming. I think getting that early user data and then getting that early traction with how people are interacting with your product and then getting some validation from a big brand. NFL is huge. And they are conservative because they have a lot at risk. They don't need to take a lot of risks to keep their multi-billion dollar brand alive. So I think getting that validation from a brand like that is just amazing. So at that point, it probably feels like, "Okay, for sure we have product market fit. ### 16:13 — From product-market fit to go-to-market fit **[16:13]** We have a great example with NFL. We have users that are happy. When did you start to feel like, "Hey, we're going into more of a go-to-market fit where we can make this repeatable and we could start to maybe accelerate and do this again and again." "Hey, we're not just winning one championship because we had a hot team, but we're actually turning this into a dynasty." Yeah. I think one thing we've seen is that, again, we've kept that formula going. And I think we keep improving that formula as well, which I think is exciting is that just adding the ability to let people trade, **[16:49]** we started seeing like, "Okay, 80% of our money was more the traditional route and 20% was coming from trading." And we're like, "That's pretty good already. 20% lift is pretty awesome." The world of gaming is so competitive now. Literally, the difference between 0.01% improvement can be the difference of if your game is going to make it or not. And so many games don't make it. So suddenly we're like, "Oh, 20%, that's pretty great." And we started to keep going after that. We started finding like, "Okay, now we got the concept of trading, but let's even take it one step further." Now gamers trade differently than they're not financial traders. ### 17:26 — Quick trade: lifting trading to 50% of revenue **[17:26]** And so we added concepts like what we called quick trade, and that became even a much bigger. Now we started seeing 50% of the revenue was coming from trading. And what quick trade did is it was really, again, making sure you get the product market fit. I think this is the best thing we've done in the tech stack is, if you think about it, again, even in traditional mobile games, free-to-play games, if you get to 4% to 5% conversion rate, so if 4% to 5% people out of 100 that come in and play your game pay you anything, that's a great sign. That's a big sign. So you're talking 95% of the people are never going to pay you anything. **[18:00]** You're still supporting the cost, and they're very, very important to the ecosystem. They create the games, make them competitive and all that. But you're trying to go after a small amount of converting players. And we started thinking about, okay, there's still a lot of people. If a Patrick Mahomes in a game is suddenly somebody selling it for $30 or $40 or $200, there's still very few consumers that are going to whip out a credit card to put $200 off for a digital asset on their credit card. So we started thinking about, okay, this is starting to work. We're starting to see these collectors come in. **[18:32]** We're starting to see different personas of people coming in. But how do we get out to the more masses, right? And this was the other moment when we really started seeing that the formula started to work now. And so the second piece of this was what we call quick trade. So in a system like quick trade, I can say, cool, I'm going to buy... If I have crypto, I can buy it in crypto. I can buy it on a credit card. I'm going to buy that $200 Patrick Mahomes, because I really want that. I want the one of 200 of that character. I want him in my lineup. But now we had an opportunity, you could say, I'll trade for that. **[19:03]** Because what we did find is that gamers love to trade. They've been trading for decades and decades, but they trade differently, right? It's not a bids and ask and floor prices and collection values. It's really more of almost a liquidity model. I'll take these two and I'll give you these three, right? And so they trade very differently. And so what we were able to figure out was, okay, I'll trade for that Mahomes, because I love trading. And what we were able to do is use the order book, right? So we had so many on NFL, about any given second, we have 50,000 open orders, **[19:35]** which would effectively allow us to price about 85% of the assets at any given time. So when I say I'll trade for this, now it's like, cool, $200 on this side. All my digital assets would show up on the right side. And they're all being priced in real time right now. And I can check off, hey, maybe I'll get rid of these five, and it's $200, $200. So now I can say trade. And when I do that, I receive the asset I want. I got rid of the ones I don't want. I didn't spend anything. It's a cashless transaction. But I got what I wanted, what the consumer actually was doing. **[20:05]** If you think about it behind the scenes, they're connecting a multi-legged trade, right? Because we real-time bought that item from one seller, and we real-time sold those five items to potentially five different buyers around the world. And that was the next step for us that was a huge kind of accelerant. It's like, okay, we've kind of got the foundational tech going, and it's doing pretty well, and people aren't pissed about it. They like it, you know? Then it was really, okay, now that that's going, how do we really play into the mindset of the consumer, right? And now that suddenly so goes to like 20, 50%. **[20:39]** So where this started becoming really interesting is in the next game, we started seeing the same patterns, like that 20%, 50%. We're like, okay, now we're starting to get onto it. And I think we're hoping to take it one step further even now, now that we have those other pieces in place with almost giving people an AI NPC, right? Like, let it talk to you, you know, in our game FIFA, the phone rings and you have an agent sitting there saying, you know, I really want, I have a team that really wants that messy, right? Will you sell that messy? And you can kind of negotiate with this AI. **[21:08]** Effectively, you're trading with other people throughout this marketplace, but you're doing it in a very fun, gamified way. So again, I keep going back to that, but I think it's so critical that product market fit is so important, right? It's not just about new tech. It's about taking new tech, taking new consumer tech, and utilizing it in something that's very seamless. You don't have to be like, what do you mean? I'm going to go, you know, it's just natural. Oh yeah, I can get a phone call in the game and I can trade right there. They effectively have used all of these different utilities **[21:37]** and they're trading with millions of other people around the world without really realizing it. It's like, it's just a fun part of that experience. And by doing those things for us, it allowed us to kind of step up and step up because it was very effective with the player base. Well, I really like the laddering approach that you've taken and finding ways to bring more people in the ecosystem, create less friction for them to start getting involved in participating. And I'm sure once they start doing that, then they get more interested in other ways of trading. That's exactly right. You mentioned AI briefly. ### 22:15 — How Mythical uses AI in development **[22:15]** Of course, it's a hot topic for every single company out there. I'm curious, currently today, how is mythical leveraging AI either internally, externally, in your games, in your operations? What are some of the major use cases you've had so far? Yeah, well, I always love hearing game people. They're like, "We've been doing AI for 20 years." And that's true. I mean, gaming has been doing AI, not the level of AI that's out now, though, obviously. And it's been great for us. I mean, honestly, we started seeing it on two different routes. I'd say one has been kind of the production side, right? Getting concept art. **[22:52]** These processes take a lot of time and a lot of iteration. And there's a lot of work that goes in for someone to create a painting like this, for somebody else to be like, "That's not the vision I wanted. Try again." And I think we've been able to use it now for a while now, things like generative AI around just speeding that process up. And what I will say, there's a lot of things about, is it going to put everybody out of a job? It's going to make it challenging for some, I do think. But what I have found is that if I try and create one of these versus a very seasoned artist trying to create one of these, **[23:25]** there's a big difference of what that output is, right? And I think that was one thing we've been able to do, is we've been able to put the tools in the right people's hands, and we've been able to speed up a lot of great things. We haven't announced the game yet, but we actually have another sports game. We kind of won the entire pitch using AI-generated art. But we had a guy that was trained so well in the styles we already had that we could do that, and it felt very, very natural. So I think that was a really important part on just the production side, right? Things like art, things like marketing, things like copy, **[23:58]** all that stuff we were basically using AI pretty heavily. The most amazing thing is a company like ours now, we're seven years old. We've been through a couple iterations of our product. And we made a decision recently to be like, "What if we just kind of started over and built the next generation from scratch, but actually use AI from day one?" And it's been pretty awesome. We are definitely not at a spot in the world. If anybody tells you otherwise, I think they're wrong. You're not at a spot to be like, "Make this system go," and I check in two days later, and it's made that system, right? ### 24:31 — Rebuilding from scratch with AI from day one **[24:31]** But what we have found is that if you integrate it properly into everything from how you deploy code to how the engineers think about it, you do kind of get like almost every employee almost becomes like three. It's almost like each employee now has a code reviewer that's helping them speed up things. It's almost like they have a junior programmer attached to every employee. And I think that's really been important for us. It's also like you have like a security analyst, right? I think that's what we found that by deploying this very naturally, you're not replacing everything necessarily. There are certain systems that I think AI can **[25:09]** almost single-handedly replace now. In our world, things like a blockchain smart contract, it does a pretty damn good job. It's a single standalone piece of code. It can do a pretty damn good job. If you're trying to do games that are all multi-connected, not so well right now, so you kind of have to kind of siphon that off. But we have found like building the new marketplace tech that we're going to be launching into this year, we found that AI assisted development was an enormous, enormous win. But we also kind of took it with some very senior level people saying, okay, cool, what are we trying to get out of this, right? **[25:39]** It's not just about throwing up a website. It's really about what are our challenges, you know, like what is the challenges we're trying to address? We want something we can iterate fast on UI, something we can deploy code quickly, something that we can kind of have security checks throughout the entire process, right? Data efficiency, things like that. And we kind of put that paradigm in place, and it's pretty amazing. And I think one of the things our developers found on this a couple of interesting things that has made our whole development process different. One is using different AIs to challenge each other. ### 26:11 — Multi-model adversarial development **[26:11]** I think that's been really, really fascinating for us, is writing a piece of code with Claude, and then having chat GTP analyze that code. And you can even analyze it like a security compliance officer or something, right? And you get a lot of, you get them almost battling each other, like, well, here's how I do it, here's how I do it. So I think that's been some really amazing parts of AI for us. We are now kind of bringing that into the game, right? We started seeing, we started seeing some really interesting things happen in our marketplace transactions. We started seeing some pretty big growth, like month over month. ### 26:43 — User-built trading bots become an AI NPC **[26:43]** And we started analyzing, like, where is this coming from? You know, like, it seems like the numbers are pretty similar. We're starting to see a lot more bids and a lot more transactions happening from single users. And we started finding out they're right in their own AI trading bots, right? So they were, they had their rules. I want to get all the Kansas City Chiefs, you know, and I'm going to continuously watch the market for one to come onto the market, right? So we saw that. And we actually decided, well, why don't we just give everybody that? You know, like, just open it up. So if you want to go write your own trading system in chat CTP or Claude, **[27:13]** let's make our system very accessible for that. But if you also want to just do it directly in the game, why don't we give every single player their own kind of NPC, like a non-playable character in the game. That basically does that for you. What do you want to do in the game? Well, who are you trying to capture on your team? What's your objectives of where you want to go? And let AI help coach you. I don't ever believe I know there's a lot of people using AI to play games. I kind of think that's the whole point of game is it's enjoyable to play, you know? So I don't think having AI play the game for you is necessarily the right thing. **[27:47]** But I think having AI assist and make it a very personal experience is definitely what we'll see some amazing things happen. And we've seen some other developers do some really cool stuff around that too. You almost have like a teammate that is AI driven, you know? And they're kind of learning what are you trying to do and I'm going to be here to help you. I think those are amazing uses of AI on the consumer side as well. I love that. So practical, sober approach to how you're leveraging AI. I'm not fully bought in on the existential dread AI apocalypse just yet. I do think something you mentioned. ### 28:22 — AI as a force multiplier, not a replacement **[28:22]** Hey, when you have experienced people leveraging AI to do things within their area of expertise, like a mathematician can use a calculator much better than I can. So I think if you have an expert using a tool, it just makes them more efficient, more powerful. You can build more, you can be more creative. At least in the next 20 years. We'll see what happens a little bit down the road. I don't know yet. It's moving faster than we thought for sure. But I do think it's one thing. We challenge every single team now, every single team in the company. How can AI help make your job better? Whether it's customer service or trust and safety and fraud analysts **[28:58]** to gain programmers, to blockchain engineers, to everything. Honestly, we're trying to use that. I mean, even from our capturing data within communications. I think if you're not using it, you're going to miss out on efficiency and someone else is going to do it better. But I think that to me is it. I don't think we're all being replaced by AI quite yet. But I do think it's going to make the teams that do drive into that. I think it's going to make people a lot stronger. Also, I'd say it's also a kind of personal development. It's been interesting. One thing is we had maybe some older game developers in particular that they've been pretty set their ways. **[29:36]** This is how you do it. This is how you do it. And we were like, no, no, try this. Put cloud code into your work stream. Have it open and have it challenging and do it this way. They were a little hesitant at first. But I think what we kind of sold it on, you kind of need to know this stuff, even just for personal development. Even if someday if you leave mythical, this is going to help you out. And I do think that everybody needs to be figuring out how it affects them and what they can be, how they can become more efficient. Because that's where I think you're going to see. My daughter is a sophomore in college right now. **[30:10]** And I've been telling her like, take every AI thing you can do. Think about what you want to do in terms of like, I need to know this now it's going to separate. That to me is going to be the biggest thing that happens, is it's going to separate people. It's going to be people, it's almost like computers, right? There was a time, some people knew computers and some people never touched a computer, right? And that started shifting, kind of segregating the workforce a little bit when you're looking at it. I think we're going to see the same thing happen with AI. It's the people that are not afraid to use it **[30:39]** and are trying to use it for everything they're doing. It's going to be very different than people that hold out. So I think to me, that's kind of where we see AI happening. I don't see a future anytime soon where, yeah, you just tell it what you want it to make and it's going to make a blockbuster hit game that everybody in the world loves, right? It is going to help you optimize games. It's going to help you come up with other ideas that you might not have thought of before, so. Yeah, I think it's a great perspective. And my kids have a little bit of ways to go. I think they'll probably be AI native, hopefully. But absolutely. **[31:16]** I always told people my kids were the on-demand generation. So my kids are older than me. It was a year or five. I'm 19 as my youngest. But they were the on-demand generation, right? They knew how to swipe an iPad. I remember my daughter, she started getting really upset when the commercial came on for the first time because she'd always watched, everything was streamed. And she's like, what, TV's broken, TV's broken, you know? But because they were the on-demand generation, right? Everything was on-demand for them. And I think you're right, your kids are going to be the AI generation. They're going to grow up and not know anything, you know, **[31:50]** without AI at some point. So I'd be like, it's an interesting time for sure. I mean, you guys were just living life in manual mode? How are you getting through your day? You drove a car? What is, why? Are you afraid of dying? How did you survive that? It's like, probably a miracle we did. But, well, you guys have come so far and you've done so much. Whatever you can share. I know there's some things that are under wraps that you can't share here. But what's next for Mythical? What's that next generation look like? And what are some of the big rocks that you're focused on? Yeah, so a couple things. ### 32:36 — What's next: opening up ownership **[32:36]** Like I said, we're kind of going through that next iteration. And I find it healthy every couple years to kind of really rethink, you know, how do we take it to the next level? I think we've been pretty good at what we've done. Our view now is to open it up even more. And I think this has been the vision since the beginning of having this thing as open as possible. But I think we kind of balanced it between how open can we make it, can we incorporate that with existing systems, and will the consumer figure it out? Are you protecting the consumer? So I will say we started off a little bit more close. We really did. With the idea of going open, right? **[33:10]** So the assets were kind of out there, but the way you got into them was very controlled. We then kind of moved to almost a shared responsibility, right? Like, okay, you guys have a key, I have a key. We're kind of half, you're kind of half in control, you can't, you know. And that was kind of the next step. Where we're heading next is we want the players to be fully in control, right? Like, you take it and go. You want to play our game and then revoke access to our game? Go for it, you know. And I think we're finally getting to that level really in two ways. I think that the user experience and the UIs are kind of now becoming easy enough **[33:45]** that I can go use a MetaMask wallet and log in to something, right? I don't think still a lot of people will. I think they're going to lean to Google or Apple logins or a phone number or whatever. But I think we are going to start opening it up. Like, if you want to, take it, it's yours, you know. Same thing with our stuff. We've had pretty much one marketplace that has kind of controlled everything. We're going to be opening that up so anybody now can list these items and they can start really flowing more naturally. And so I think that's one thing for us is just to be able to take that to the next level. ### 34:17 — Three pillars: economy, social, and platform **[34:17]** The second part for us is really now focused on kind of, we have kind of three pillars of how we wanted to build Mythical and we've really been kind of dominating that first one. The second one first, the first one for us was like economic tech. How do we change the economies within these games? And that's been our primary focus. Second focus for us is now social interaction. How do you start interacting differently with each other, right? So that's the next big piece we're going to be launching and fairly soon we're going to launch what we call Pulse Arena, which is effectively kind of a tournament challenge system. ### 34:48 — Pulse Arena and social tournaments **[34:48]** You and your buddies have a quick challenge for the next two hours. It could be free. Maybe we each want to put a buff on it, right? Whatever you want to do, you'll be able to kind of have that now social experience and have it safe, you know. When it goes into a contract, it flows back out of a contract. You know, the game is the Oracle, the Oracle is verified. So it's more putting the rails into how do you start playing and having fun with each other, right? And I think that's the big next step for us. And I think we're going to see some cool stuff. I think we could see at some point, you know, million dollar tournaments **[35:18]** that people are creating right out there. You know, I think I could see some of the big influencers be able to create million dollar polls, right? I think that's in the future. But I think it's going to be fun. Again, it's hands off. You know, you can go read the contract yourself. It's a safe way for anyone in the world that wants to do something like that can do that, right? So I think those are kind of the next fun ones I think are social interactions. How do you think through tournaments? How do you think through competing with your friends? So that's kind of the next phase for us from a product perspective. ### 35:47 — Becoming a game infrastructure provider **[35:47]** The final thing for us is we've been making most of our own games, right? So like we made NFL, we made Blanca's. We've made Pudgy Party. We made FIFA Rivals recently. We are now going to start opening that up to other people building on us. And I think that's been our vision from the beginning. But what I found in gaming in particular is it's already hard enough to make a game. And then shifting the paradigm of a game is also hard. And then building that fintech system effectively behind the scenes is also hard. So I think if we had just started with the platform and said, "Hey, everybody come build on us," nobody'd know how to do it, right? **[36:23]** Because there was no real ways. Like there wasn't anyone pulling those levers and responsible for pulling those levers to do it right. So that was really the main reason we built our own games is that we had the expertise to do it. But we wanted to pull the levers and understand how do we tune this and where does it make sense. And now that we've done that four times now at Mythical, we are starting to open that up. So you're going to start seeing other game developers building on our tech stack. And that's been the vision since the beginning. It's just taken us a little while to get it into a place that we have enough data now. We've seen enough. **[36:52]** We have 10 million wallets now that have some form of funding in our chain system. I think that number is going to be going just naturally with FIFA and the World Cup next year. And kind of the growth we're seeing on the games, I think will probably be a 50 to 100 million wallets within 12 months, which is great. Now let other people build experiences on top of that. And that's where we're going very, very heavy, as you're going to see us kind of move from being a game maker to more of a game infrastructure provider. And I think we're at a spot now. You'll start seeing the first couple of those in the next couple of months here. **[37:25]** And I think, you know, again, we're not going to try and go crazy. I think we're going to try and do, you know, five to seven of them next year. You'll start seeing other games now being able to build. Because we've got it to a point that they can. You know, they can do that, which is exciting. That's unbelievably exciting. And if this is helpful as a data point, here at LeanScale, we did have a team building activity where we set up a gaming tournament. We did have a pool of money and we had prizes. We divvied them up. I had to manage it. So, you know, luckily the team trust me to do it, but I could see where that would cause some issues **[37:59]** and just managing the logistics of moving money around. But for me, that sounds really exciting to kind of get back into some games where you can interact with friends, coworkers, colleagues, just general communities in a totally unique way. We probably would have done it here at LeanScale. We would have hosted it on that platform. We'll hopefully have that platform soon for you. I appreciate it. I love it. I love it. Last thing I just kind of love to hear, because it's always interesting. I mean, hearing people's personal stories, how did you end up doing what you're doing? You know, were there any early childhood passions ### 38:45 — Origin story: Chuck E. Cheese to Commodore 64 **[38:45]** that kind of led you into this industry or certain things you like to solve that made you really fit to start something like Mythical and the other companies you've done? What does that origin story look like? Oh, man. I got a couple of fun ones there, I guess. So I had a very interesting childhood. In fact, my dad was an engineer. And if you ever remember Showbiz Pizza or Chuck E. Cheese? Sure. So he was an executive there. And he was basically the head of engineering there. So I literally grew up in a stage of the animatronic characters, and I get to go play with them and kind of record stuff with them and all that. And so that was my childhood. **[39:29]** I spent a lot of time at Chuck E. Cheese and Showbiz, and my dad was one of the executives there. And that was fun. That was really, really fun for me. I got a huge love of video games, obviously, spending so much time in these arcades and all that. But I started programming when I was really young. So I got my first computer at 8, and it was a Commodore 64, and I was just passionate about writing code. And I did that for a long time. My dad then ended up leaving Showbiz, and he created his own company around what's called laser video projection. So it was basically, now you can do it in like a box that big, **[40:00]** but at the time it was like the size of a car that you had lasers as light sources that could throw an image that's four stories tall, right? So he was the first to do this in the '90s, and he had this projector thing that basically could move a 360, all this stuff around, and he needed somebody to write the code for it. So he, I think I was 14, maybe, I think it's 14. He had come to me and said, "Will you write this for me, and I'll pay you $500 to do it." And I spent my entire summer break, and I wrote the software that he used in all these shows, like Dell Computers for ESPN. I had written that software, 14, ### 40:36 — Dropping out at 19 to run a venture-backed startup **[40:36]** and I got my $500 and thought I was the richest person on the planet. And 14, that's Org's money, which was amazing. It was pretty awesome, yeah. So I've had that bump for a while. In college, I went to University of Kansas. I had started a website, and this is 1996. I started a website to kind of keep track of my friends from high school. We had a friend of mine that had an aneurysm his freshman year, and everybody was trying to, you know, this is obviously pre-website, early website days. But I started a site there called Richard called Kansas City Alumni, which is where I was from, dot com, and then changed it to plant alumni, **[41:12]** and we added a military one and a Greek one. And yeah, I ended up dropping out my sophomore year because I had 35 employees when I was 19, and we had raised venture, we were venture-backed and 19 years old. So I got head first, dropped into this. I didn't finish school. I ended up leaving to run this company, and the people that bought it were guys that started MySpace. So it was like pre-MySpace days, that's how early that was. We were a top 50. At the time, it was called Media Metrics. It was the rating system. So we were a top 50 website in the world in like 1997. So I got thrown into it pretty early. **[41:50]** I did a couple other companies after that that we did pretty well with, and we exited those. And then I got into Activision. So it's really been kind of an early-- I've been doing this for a while. I've been doing this for a while. But it's just a passion. I just love consumer technologies. One of my favorite games I ever did, Call of Duty is probably the most famous I had done. But there is a game, another franchise, called Skylanders, and we had done this card game. I had actually packed sitting here still, someone I was looking at. I actually haven't packed the cards yet. So there's these cards here. **[42:25]** And then you can see there's like a little dot around the side here. That's effectively a QR code. And so every single card is a different pattern. And this is something we invented back at Activision Days. And it was fun. To me, I love that. We could sell packs of cards at Toys R Us. You could open a pack. And with any phone, any iPad, any Android, iOS, whatever, you can literally scan that card, and we could tell you in 50 milliseconds we could register it to you. So we were able to -- so tech like that, I've always been so passionate about. It's just new forms of how consumers can interact. And so that's partly how we got to mythical, **[43:00]** is like just thinking about the problems, finding new technology out there, and figuring out how does it make sense for, in particular, video games. Amazing. Such a cool story. Such a cool story. I think especially love that you built something mid-college, dropping out to run a company at 19. That must have been quite an experience. And then I'm sure you learned a ton. And I think this is one thing, you know, for people who are founders, you know, it's -- whether it works or fails, it doesn't mean it's your last project. It doesn't mean it's your last company. And then every single one, I'm sure you learned a ton ### 43:43 — Fundraising: it's not you, it's them **[43:43]** to where you could skip some of those mistakes on the next one. But just what a journey to get to where you are today. Well, thank you. It's fun. And I think that's -- it's funny. I get people all the time asking about being an entrepreneur and doing that. And one, you have to have the stomach for it, because I think -- it's interesting. I think you sound weird, but I think especially if you're raising money, right? This is one lesson I learned, at least, is that it's almost like -- I've never been an actor, but from what I've heard from actor friends from L.A., they get told no a lot, you know? You get told no a lot. **[44:17]** And a lot of times when you go into it like a part for an actor, I think a lot of times they already know the second you walk in the door, it's like, nope, that's not who I was looking for. It's just not the vision I had in my head. I think being an entrepreneur and especially raising money is the same process, right? You can go into a dozen or a hundred different VCs, and if they're not also thinking that same idea, it's going to be hard to connect that deal. It doesn't mean your idea is bad, you know? You just got to keep being persistent and finding the person and finding the people that also share that vision, right? **[44:46]** And I think it's a tough world, for sure, but I think it is -- I've been able to see this enough, and these are things that, honestly, I learned very early that I was pissed off, man. Like, why does this VC not like me? Why do they -- this is a great idea. How do they not see that, you know? And after a while, you realize, like, it's not a bad idea. It's just not the idea they have, you know? And it's really finding those people as employees, find those people as customers, and find those people as investors that share that vision, right? And I think, for us, one of our big successes is we can sell that vision. **[45:17]** I think sharing and selling that vision to whoever that audience is is probably one of the best skills you can develop as an entrepreneur, because that's how you really get great teams behind you, great investment behind you, but also be able to build that community behind you. Yeah, and you do have to have that vision, especially when things are changing so quickly, and, yes, being able to communicate that to your teams, being able to communicate it to investors if you have them, I agree. But if you're in that founder CEO seat, it's absolutely something you need to do. It's your responsibility and to work on that if there's any personal growth. **[45:54]** And I do think what you mentioned -- Beauty is an eye of the beholder. So if, you know, it's not you, it's them. They just have an idea of what they value. And even investors, I think sometimes people don't know. They have very specific deal boxes that they're allowed to invest in. So it's got to be like the right exact fit for whoever they promise to their LPs that they would be deploying capital towards. Like they don't always have the ability to just move money into whatever company they want anyway. So, yeah, it's just not a good fit. So if anybody's out there fundraising and having a tough time, you know, it might not be you, it's them. ### 46:27 — Close **[46:27]** Maybe sometimes it's you, but, you know, not always. But it can be but. Awesome, awesome. Well, John, this has been incredible. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for hopping on. I think everything you shared, everything you've done, just a lot of sage advice and wisdom for anybody who's in a founder's seat right now. I think the way you describe product market fit, building for that end user in mind, bringing empathy into their situation, what they would find value in, and then moving into that go to market fit where, hey, you have some good wins. Now it feels like it's time to make it repeatable **[47:08]** and then figuring out how to scale and bring more people in your ecosystem. I think you've just done a phenomenal job of doing that. And I hope that people listening can replicate some of your perspective as well. Well, thank you, John. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. Best of luck with everything. Can't wait to see what you guys do next. And as soon as you have that tournament style platform ready to go, consider Lean Scale a customer as well. Sounds good. Sounds good. Well, thank you again for having me. I really appreciate the time. Thank you. --- _LeanScale Podcast Knowledge Hub. Free to quote and cite with attribution to The LeanScale Podcast (https://www.leanscale.team)._