Going Off World: Moon, Mars, Venus, and beyond
Welcome to Going Offworld, your gateway to the cosmos beyond our Earth. We will explore our familiar celestial neighbors and venture into the vast, uncharted territories of our solar system. Each episode, we'll explore the cutting-edge of space exploration, the latest discoveries, and the incredible technological advances propelling humanity into a new era of interstellar adventure. Underwriting provided by the WayPaver Foundation. Join us, as we embark on this journey together, to the moon, Mars, Venus, and beyond.
Going Off World: Moon, Mars, Venus, and beyond
Going Off World EP 5: Gaming Our Way to Mars with Hunter Stanchak
Hunter Stanchek, former Apple and Magic Leap engineer, is building games that simulate thriving on Mars to inspire and train the next generation of space explorers. His company Thrive on Mars creates scientifically accurate, engaging games that teach players about surviving and flourishing in the harsh Martian environment while contributing to humanity's multi-planetary future.
• Stanchek worked at Apple designing products like the Apple Watch before joining AR startup Magic Leap
• The realization that space technology inspires STEM education while providing positive innovations led him to focus on Mars gaming
• Unlike most Mars entertainment focusing on survival and death, Thrive on Mars deliberately emphasizes thriving and building sustainable settlements
• Mission Control is their flagship real-time economic simulation game where players manage Martian resources using scientifically accurate values
• The game economy uses blockchain technology and a cryptocurrency called "Marsha" that serves as the medium of exchange
• Players can purchase Mars technology as NFTs with dynamic pricing based on actual demand in the game economy
• The platform allows for testing new Mars innovations in the game before physical prototyping begins
• Future games include Outpost Surge (turn-based roguelike) and Martian Resident (Unreal Engine 5 game with exploration and base building)
• Gaming will become a recruitment pipeline for the space industry, training future mission controllers and astronauts
• Players can stay updated through thriveonmars.com, Twitter, Discord, and weekly AMAs every Thursday at 2pm
🎧 Listen Now On:
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/going-off-world-moon-mars-venus-and-beyond/id1737881627
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6WjqRL2AZnLWO7Z3DTDjS1?si=d47c055cca1e4df7
Web: https://goingoffworld.buzzsprout.com/
Thank you for joining me on this ongoing journey into the future. Until next time, stay curious, and always think forward.
Welcome to Going Offworld, your gateway to the cosmos beyond our Earth. Join us as we embark on this journey together to the Moon, mars, venus and beyond.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Episode 5 of Going Offworld. I'm your host, Steve Fisher. Today, we're exploring how gaming can help humanity become a multi-planetary species with Hunter Stanchek, a former Apple and Magic Leap engineer, who's now building games that simulate life on Mars. As the creator of Thrive on Mars, Hunter shares how his experience designing products like the Apple Watch changed his vision for creating engaging, scientifically accurate games that teach players about surviving and thriving on the Red Planet. From real-time economic simulations to blockchain-based virtual economies, he's developing innovative ways to inspire the next generation of space explorers. Whether you're curious about how games can train future astronauts, what it takes to build a sustainable Mars element, or how blockchain technology is revolutionizing space education, you won't want to miss this fascinating conversation about the intersection of gaming and space exploration. Join us on this journey where the sky is not the limit and the stars are just the beginning. Hunter welcome.
Speaker 3:Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:Great to have you here on the Off-Road Podcast.
Speaker 3:So for those of you who don't know you, I would love to start with your background and your kind of your journey how you became interested in space exploration, gaming, all the things you're doing, working on the Apple Watch, a couple other products, and really got inspired with design and future technology, emerging technology, trends, all that stuff.
Speaker 3:So I, after about five years there, I moved to Magic Leap, which is an augmented reality startup doing sort of spatial computing technology, and the reason I moved there was I wanted to just really focus on where's tech going and what's going to be the most positive way to use technology for humanity to promote like creativity and innovation. And then, after another four or five years there, I took a step back and really reassessed where tech's going, what would be the most interesting thing to work on? I've always been a big gamer and also really interested in space, and you know I just saw the Starship, I saw some of the trends that are happening in space and how there's all this amazing technology that's being developed by various research institutions or startups, and so I was really inspired by that and just wanted to find a way to use my skill set to help accelerate humanity to become multi-planetary, and that's basically, what led me to start what I'm doing now?
Speaker 2:What were some pivotal moments during that journey, that in your career that influenced your decision? Like, really, you talked about some of the education, helping people, but were some things that really kind of were like I need to do this. That kind of drove you that way.
Speaker 3:So I would say the biggest pivotal moment was after working in augmented reality for a while and kind of seeing both the positives and negatives of emerging technology. And what I mean by that is there's uh with augmented reality. Specifically, there's a lot of ways it can expand human potential and creativity Uh, it's going to make people uh, and creativity it's going to make people basically going to make people a lot quicker at seeing information in front of them. It's going to, you know, help people in tons of ways. It's also more entertaining, it's more interesting. But the negative is that you're going to be a lot more distracted. Within all you have a, basically screens that are now in your field of view, that are distracting you from the world around you and taking you away from, I think, what makes being human so amazing.
Speaker 3:So that was a pivotal moment because I realized technology is kind of a reflection of humanity and if we look at social media and we look at the way that people use current devices, there's also a lot of negatives that we have to acknowledge.
Speaker 3:And augmented reality is sort of an amplification of that of sort of where we are currently, of that of sort of where we are currently.
Speaker 3:So I started looking at space because it's applying the most innovative technology. But if you look at the Apollo missions and some of the earlier space initiatives, it inspired young people to pursue science, technology, engineering, mathematics spiked like 300% when astronauts landed on the moon, which is incredible All while providing some really amazing innovations to the world. You know, like developments in camera technology and developments in, you know, lots of healthcare. You know developments in science, et cetera. And so I just I think that that moment I realized we can get humanity to to back to the moon and to Mars, it's going to propel humanity to like sort of a new chapter and inspire a lot of young people to want to pursue, you know, engineering, design, science and all of these other really important things that can ultimately have like a much bigger impact on the world. And so I made the decision to want to spend the rest of my career focused on that mission and really finding the best ways to contribute to that.
Speaker 2:That's great. You mentioned your experiences working at Apple and Magic Leap on the design of those projects and some like the watch and some significant projects. I'm not asking you to break any NDAs, but lessons learned about. I mean, these are two of the best places for design in the world. How did those experiences shape you? Did you take like really sound lessons on, like what you brought into the design of the organization and even the product and the game?
Speaker 3:yeah, totally. Um. So I actually joined Apple when I was 20. I dropped out of college to join, so I was really young and, um, what I learned, it was almost like an extension of college for me. It was like my college degree was working at Apple, kind of.
Speaker 3:And so there I was able to be around basically world-class designers and engineers, and you know, I learned things like lessons like how important simplicity is, things like lessons like how important simplicity is. Uh, there was actually a motto when you walked into the design studio and it just had like simplify, simplify, simplify, with two simplifies crossed out. Um, and that was like kind of the motto that we worked on. You know, you might have to say no to a thousand before you say yes, and also it means you have to kind of explore and really dive into the details to come back to the surface with something that is truly world-class and refined. And those kind of values were instilled in me when I worked there and it was something that I took forward with me to Magic Leap, where I started as an engineer but then realized they really needed a lot of design help, and so I used a lot of the lessons from Apple to start a design team at Magic Leap.
Speaker 3:I was doing prototyping and product design and UI design for the interface, and so yeah, I mean, and then now with the project where we're building games for Mars, one of the guiding principles is it has to look incredible, it has to look like something you want to go and move to Mars tomorrow. And I think that's a pretty unique differentiator for us, because I think a lot of times it's easy to focus on just the engineering or just the science and forget that real people are going to be living there and there's human factors involved and you know it needs to be a place that people want to go in order to change the will of humanity, to want to become multi-planetary. So you know, those are the kind of the things that have taken into what we're doing now.
Speaker 2:That's great. You know one of the things that, as fellow designers, you know the simplify, simplify, simplify. You know it's always about iteration and further reduction. I learned one of my previous jobs about MISI Mutually Exclusive, collectively Exhaustive. You know it. Jobs about MISI, mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive. You know it's about. You know the 10 page PowerPoint with 70 pages in the appendix, right? What are the things that people really need to see? And as a designer, I think personally I don't know if you've shared this is that the friction in a product. It's the ones that people don't talk about are the best experiences, because it's like you either rave or you don't say anything. It's the bad ones that everyone talks about, right? So if nobody's talking about it, it's probably you've done your job really well, like in the terms of the interface or the flow of knowing, of a knowing the user's experience, and I don't know. See how you feel about that.
Speaker 3:I'd love to get your reaction to the the friction oh, definitely, definitely, um, and it's, it's fun to find how, like the. The best way to do that and that's that's where a lot of the fun comes for me is is, um, not only on like a game level, which I'm sure we can get into, like the games and what we're doing there, but also, just, you know, when we're designing some of the buildings or some of the equipment that lives inside of the games, um, you know how, how would we design it in a way which is approachable, intuitive, uh, but also beautiful?
Speaker 2:that's beautiful. Yeah, no, I love. I completely agree. Uh, you know, design is a creative outlet, all also as much as an engineering problem. You know good design, you're usually solving a problem of some sort. Right, it's may not just be a different, it's a different applied engineering in that way. So let's talk about Thrive on Mars, which is kind of a bigger organization. What's the mission? How did that, you know kind of come about for you? How did that you know kind of come about for you?
Speaker 3:Where did it start? Yeah, so it basically started with the belief that play can inspire reality and that's how we can create the future that of a multi-planetary humanity looks like. And so I would say like our mission is basically to galvanize a generation of gamers to help humans thrive on Mars. I think gamers are basically some of the best problem solvers we have in the world. I mean, all games are problem solving in some capacity and if we can point that talent and that brain power towards innovating from Mars, then we have a real shot at accelerating humanity to become multi-planetary.
Speaker 2:So you know, hearing your talk about multi-planetary species, which is a consistent theme I hear from many people in interviews and I agree I'm in the same boat. We need to be that just for our own fault, the fault tolerance of humanity Could you share some of the core values and principles that guide you, more than multi-planetary species and training people, but just to kind of go a little deeper into that.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I would say one is basically we need to create engaging gameplay that has mass appeal because there's billions of gamers worldwide and bringing them into the science sort of delicately, so that it's not overwhelming, but also it starts to plant ideas in people's minds about what it is like to live on Mars. I think the other thing is exploring. One of them is like design, of course. One of them is like design, of course, building a experience that is world class in terms of values, just trying to play into the excitement, the fun.
Speaker 3:We actually called it Thrive on Mars because we found that almost all entertainment and gaming around Mars has the perspective of death and survival. It's a lot of it's around how not to die and, although it's entertaining, the issue is that it kind of subconsciously plants this idea in people's minds that it's not a place that you'd want to go, and so we're trying to take sort of the opposite view of what does it look like to thrive, what are the positive, optimistic aspects and perspective of what it can be like to be on another planet? And so you know that takes shape in terms of storytelling. It takes shape in terms of you know how we represent the artwork, how we represent the games.
Speaker 3:Some of the missions and scenarios are more focused on exploration and more focused on base building and, you know, building your ideal life on the red planet. But you know we do. We do need to balance it out a little bit with some of the survival mechanics, just because that is a reality of of Mars, but it's more about exploring with your friends, doing it in a way where you know you have, you know, enough water, food, oxygen, et cetera, and you're able to, you know, successfully do a mission and keeping it around. Basically the exciting elements of multi-planetary living.
Speaker 2:Sounds, the concept sounds kind of like SimCity and just lost the other game, Civilization. Yeah, Like a blend of the, you know not just straight turn-based, you know build a civilization but also just living in it, and interacting.
Speaker 2:Definitely.
Speaker 2:There was a video game years ago probably about 15, 16, 20 years ago now that the the army brought out.
Speaker 2:It was like in the call of duty and all of them were popular and it was basically a recruiting tool, using it to teach people, like, about more than just you know first person shooter, but just the squad, how the squads work, just, and it you know uses. It's how you might feel about that, but it's just in terms of the education level, right. It's an interesting concept, just for the fact that people don't know what they could be getting into or what they even could be doing as a role, because everyone's going to have a job there. It's not going to be just leisure doing as a role, because everyone's going to have a job there. It's not going to be just leisure. And when I you know think about how does it you know we talked about, like I mentioned, civilization or Sims how does it simulate real world challenges to living on Mars? Like what are the things that kind of do things randomly break, do things? You know peril and you know types of challenge come in the game?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I'll focus on our first game, which is Mission Control. It's a real-time economic simulation. So the challenge there is to figure out how to produce net positive resources in like a large scale settlement with other players. So you know you're using real Mars tech, so the resource consumption of all of the stuff in the game and the production is all mapped back to scientific values. Map back to scientific values. And there's also we hook into the Mars climate database to generate hazards which damage items, break things, and so it is like you're actually managing a large scale mission control simulation, but as you're doing it, you're earning achievements, you're progressing in a specialty and you're climbing leaderboards, and then all of it's blockchain based, so you're earning cryptocurrency if you're doing it in an efficient way. So yeah, I mean those are kind of. Basically, the vision we have with the real world impacts is kind of twofold. The first one is because all the items are tied back to scientific values.
Speaker 3:We can actually have a pipeline for new Mars innovation to get added to the game and tested.
Speaker 3:So, for instance, if there's a new solar panel design or a new, you know, mobile fission reactor or there's a way to grow food, that's innovative, we can actually people can submit those ideas. We review them in a decentralized way and then integrate them into the game and see how they do against other pieces of Mars technology. And then the second one is kind of training simulations, so diving more into specific scenarios where you need to design a mission plan that effectively achieves like an objective, whether it's mining a certain amount of material using limited resources, or growing a settlement to a certain amount of astronauts, you know, in a limited amount of time. Or what if there's a dust storm that is just consistently hitting a settlement for three months? How do you survive and build, you know, a thriving outpost in those conditions? So we can actually use our platform to test all these things, which is, we believe, will continue to be interesting for education, for astronaut training, for potential other real world training scenarios, and so that's like one aspect of what we're trying to build.
Speaker 2:That's great this. You have them all in the Steam platforms. Where are they currently located and what's coming so?
Speaker 3:our first game is browser-based, so that one's on thriveonmarscom. The second game, which is outpost search, that one's a turn-based roguelike deck building game. Um, that one's coming in closed beta on steam.
Speaker 2:uh, we could probably send the links out uh, yeah, I'll put them in the show notes.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that'd be great uh that that will be on steam as well as uh downloadable on mobile devices.
Speaker 2:So and you know, in our pre-call we were talking about the, the games there's all on using blockchain. So there's on-chain and off-chain games. Uh, could you explain the kind of differences between them and the like, the game mechanics, so that so many people have not probably tried blockchain games yet because it's usually a little more niche. So it'd be great to talk about it in the context and why you use blockchain.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so basically blockchain games use cryptocurrency as a way to reward players for their time and skill. So typically with games you just earn XP or you earn some sort of leaderboard stats or achievement, but those are, you know, on Xbox or PlayStation they don't really have any value, or PlayStation, they don't really have any value. And then the second thing is in-game purchases are different with between blockchain games and other games. So blockchain games, when you're purchasing an item in the game, that typically comes with a token or a certificate called an NFT, or a certificate called an NFT which is transferred to you and you own it in a wallet, meaning that you can go and sell it to someone else or another marketplace and potentially earn back the value of that asset, whereas if you were to go play like Fortnite or Call of Duty and buy a, you know, a weapon, skin or something like that in the game, that money is a sunk cost that you're not getting back because there's no way to really sell that item. It's attached to your character in the game but there's no marketplace. So what this effectively does is it gives like all of the value that is going to the game studio back to the players and that value now is held with the players that are actually investing time into the game revolutionized the gaming industry because it's giving players sort of the power, that of the value that they're creating the game and, rather than needing to make money from just solely streaming or youtubing or esports, people could actually make money and convert the time and the skill that they have in the game to real value by just simply playing the game and being skilled at the game.
Speaker 3:So we're basically looking at both of these because, of course, most of the gamers are still not using blockchain technology.
Speaker 3:It's very, very soon and very early.
Speaker 3:Blockchain technology it's very, very soon and very early, but the the main reason we wanted to use it for the first game was because it's an economic simulation game and we found that with blockchain incentive, people make more realistic decisions within an economic simulation, and so the blockchain element actually provides more useful insight into decision making.
Speaker 3:The second reason we're using it is because it's very expensive to run a real-time simulation um with servers and because you're basically having to update the game state you know, and process all of those game decisions on AWS or some series of what are called smart contracts, which are essentially just um, you know bits of code that you can deploy to the blockchain and basically, the game is running completely on the blockchain, meaning that the people that um are running the game state and updating it. In that game, they're're earning blockchain tokens for doing that, which have value, and it's allowing us to not need to pay the US dollar cost of hosting large servers and it also means that the game will just continue to survive, you know, forever. There's no way for us to remove it or delete it, because it's basically deployed to the blockchain.
Speaker 2:Do people have a local copy. That way, when it's decentralized, they're playing it locally and they're engaging with more of the you know how do they engage with others, like the decentralized nature of that. So just for people listening, so they understand, you know. You say it can live on because most games are like Fortnite they're on massive data centers at Microsoft, right, they're just horse energy suckers, horsepower and, like you said, a lot of it's sunk cost. So where is how does the model work? I think people would. I think, once people understand, like the locations and like what it really means to do, that it might help get some.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so it's different between blockchain protocols, but essentially, the way it works for the one that we're using is there's different nodes that make up this network, and these nodes, they've staked a certain amount of value to the blockchain, and that's a dollar value of tokens, and that allows for their node or their server to process a certain amount of transactions, and so it's basically called distributed proof of stake. So all of those nodes have a proof of staked value, and they are running this network in a decentralized way, because what happens is, if one of those nodes decides to remove their stake, another one's right behind them wanting to take their stake, another one's right, you know, behind them wanting to take those rewards. So, essentially, they're all earning token rewards for operating this. So all of those nodes have local copies of the blockchain, and so they're running it.
Speaker 3:But for players playing our game, they're basically just interacting with the blockchain by broadcasting transactions to it. Those transactions can be, uh, something as simple as, um, you know, transfer my power, like, convert my power into water, or you know, uh, you know, use this particular solar panel to produce power, like. These are just, they're basically just different gameplay decisions, and everyone is broadcasted to the blockchain. All of those nodes are basically running the blockchain itself. And then we have another layer, essentially on top of the blockchain, which we call the Mars Operator Program, and these are people who elect to basically run nodes that are specific to our game state, and they're the ones that are that are essentially running the game um by broadcasting transactions to the blockchain that are like updating the game state um in like a real-time basis.
Speaker 2:So you also. If I understand, the in-game currency is called Marcia. Yep.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that's a private token on your blockchain, right? So it's not like you didn't put it out to raise money or do anything like that, it's just does it have with a smart contract, you can you convert it on the wallet to eth. It has swappability, so somebody can, like they have a mask, they can then take some eth or some bitcoin and buy in and so you know, kind of moving in and out of the game, right? If they want to, like you said, if they're a node, they're a node provider. They have to pay for the server, like, whatever they're doing, it helps them and I'm sure in the transactions, pay for that, right?
Speaker 3:And I'm curious, you know how that has significance for the game economy, games economy a medium of exchange in the game, and so you can convert all of the resources you're producing in mission control to Marsha and back again. So it's basically the medium of exchange for the Mars economy. We're also using Marsha to compensate the nodes that are running the game state, so there's a portion of it that is allocated towards those nodes. Uh, there's a portion of it that's allocated towards the game itself and and basically the the game rewards for people who are efficiently managing the tech. And then marcia is a token that is on the blockchain, which allows you to swap in and out of ETH or Bitcoin or whatever other currency you want to swap in and out of. So Marsh is the thing that allows the gamers to go and swap to other things that they want.
Speaker 2:And the NFTs that are the for those listening that are not familiar with listening, that not familiar with they're basically they're non-fungible tokens. They don't have a exchangeability. They have a value, uh, but they are, but they're used to hold a certain item or a certain, sometimes digital or even physical asset connection. So with that, does you have royalties on that, as people would like resell them. So that way you keeps your game pay like you. You you earn if people are. You know, obviously it helps with you know dealing with flippers and things like that. So do you have any of that in them?
Speaker 3:yeah, so all of the nfts are representative of mars tech. So we have you have one that's like a bunch of solar panels, we have one that's a fission reactor, one that's an inflatable greenhouse, and so we actually have done something pretty unique with our NFTs, where you can actually purchase NFTs inside of the game for Marsha and it's dynamically priced based on the supply and demand, meaning that the more that someone buys a certain piece of technology, the higher the price is in our store for that asset, and then you can also sell your NFTs back to the store for store credit, meaning that you can swap from one piece of tech to the other. So this is actually kind of one of the central ideas with the game, meaning that we can look at the most popular pieces of Mars technology and it's driven by market demand. And so this is different than what most other blockchain games do, which is where they have, like, a fixed price for an NFT and they typically like drop them in a you know specific time and then they either sell out or they don't, and then the secondary market for these nfts on these other games are either zero or they're extremely high.
Speaker 3:Um, and so it's like prohibitive to basically get into these games, um, because you might have to pay $1,000 just for an NFT to be able to access the game. So what we did is we essentially have these dynamically priced NFTs, and then we have different rarities that go all the way down to values where you can basically play the full game for less than the cost of a cup of coffee. You can basically play the full game for less than the cost of a cup of coffee. And then there's, you know, much rarer NFTs which give you, like, full ownership of certain items within the simulation, so you can set fees and you can, like have a higher level of gameplay with those, gameplay with those. And so we're basically spreading out the ability for players of kind of all budgets to be able to experience mission control.
Speaker 2:That's great. Related to that, with the products and the NFTs, you said earlier in the conversation that you also will get in suggestions of technology, do you have a DAO? For those who don't know what a DAO is, it's a decentralized, autonomous organization. So it's the ultimate purist in democracy in terms of choice. So letting the community do you let the community kind of be part, participate in that as well?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we are like pre-DAO, but we do have voting mechanics and community discussions that influence the technology. It's in the roadmap, but the challenge with DAO sometimes is you need a good balance of participation and incentives and you know it's a little bit complicated to get that incentive structure right. So right now, instead of doing a DAO, we actually are finding that having a dynamic economy in the game. It almost acts like a DAO, where instead of people voting for a specific proposal in a DAO, they're voting with their in-game currency and their resources on what technology they want to buy more of or produce more of. Month. We're releasing a new feature called parts, which are all of these components that you can collect by putting resources into expansion missions and then you can craft a specific high value NFT of your choosing based on those parts. So it's essentially like a voting mechanism, but instead of it being proposals, it's basically you're voting with your in-game resources and where you're investing your time and skill and expanding your inventory.
Speaker 2:That's pretty brilliant. I was going to ask you what innovative features are coming, so you definitely thanks for answering that one. You know these are not easy games to build. What have been some of the biggest technical challenges you faced while developing it or both games?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would say blockchain games are probably at least an order of magnitude more complex to build than regular games, because, I'd agree the the.
Speaker 3:The main reason is you can't really evolve or iterate as easily because you're you're dealing with a live economy, and so the most challenging thing was integrating real tech and real resource values into the economy while we were building out the game functionality. And so, for instance, there were some updates where we started the game with what we thought were some realistic values. We started the game with what we thought were some realistic values, and then we got feedback from planetary geologists and agricultural experts and people who are well-versed in environmental control and life support systems, and we had to make some tweaks and some adjustments to the numbers to reflect that new data, and the first few adjustments were big enough to make an impact on the value of a lot of the NFTs, and so it was very challenging for us to navigate communicating that to the players and also doing these adjustments, um, you know, iteratively, and so I would say the hardest thing has just been getting an economy that works, that's dynamic, um, that's also exciting for players to participate in, that's.
Speaker 2:That's a great way to kind of cap on that. And that kind of leads me into how do you balance the creativity and the technical precision, because it's like you can make a technically accurate and a very mechanically correct game, but people have to want to play it. It has to be creative and engaging right and and retaining the. Uh, how do you? How do you balance? How have you been balancing that?
Speaker 3:So, um, with mission control, I would say we were overambitious, um, and we went a little too technical. So if I were to do it again, I'd probably simplify it a bit more or at least provide a version of the game that allows people to just play it at a little bit of a more basic level, because it is, people get very into the weeds with the strategy of it and it people that play, you know more deep strategy games like eve, online, um, games like that. So it's, uh, it, basically what we? Um, I think that in the future, like what we're, what we're gonna do, is a lot of the experiences that we're building right now are hooking into that economy and hooking into that mission control experience, but much more visually appealing, much more sort of adrenaline, engaging, exciting, engaging, exciting. Like we have Martian Resident coming, which is a Unreal Engine 5 game where you can drive, you know, the buggy around, the rovers around, so you can build your own house, you can go on exploration missions with your friends, there's competitions, but a lot of those missions that are actually in the game are being broadcasted by people in mission control. Um, so it's effectively connecting games together through a shared economy. Um, that's cool, which is allowing us to broaden our, our player base while still maintaining the integrity of the economy, um, and so I think that that's one thing.
Speaker 3:The other thing is, like we made a decision with the economy where, instead of and this is more of like a in the weeds thing, but it kind of in different notations.
Speaker 3:So, like you know, power is in like kilowatt hours. Um, food is in, you know, like grams, or you know some unit like that, waters and milliliters, and so it would be extremely complex for a player to have to understand all those units and be able to like see that in an interface and like know how everything converts. So what we did is we basically took all those values and then we removed the notations and just made them this is power, this is water, this is food, this is fuel, and all of those numbers are piped into our game, so people just need to focus on a specific resource. That is a lot simpler to understand, but all of it's backed by the actual production and consumption values based on the research. So like it's simplified for the gamers, but it's all still tying back to the research and it's a one-to-one relationship there of how we're towing the line, basically between an overly scientific and engineering-focused experience that isn't really a game, and a full-on sort of game. So it's like kind of a middle ground that we're achieving.
Speaker 2:So let's put our futures hat on. You guys have a roadmap. You guys are building this. You've been working on this a long time. Let's talk about the future of space gaming. How do you see the intersection of gaming and space exploration evolving over, say, the next decade? How do you see that kind of going? I know you've looked at that, especially for your own roadmap, of course know you've looked at that, especially for your own roadmap, of course, yeah.
Speaker 3:So I think that gaming will be used as a recruitment pipeline for people working in space. I think eventually anyone with a laptop can be part of mission control for any you know planet, any settlement, and we're training people how to do that. I also think that gaming can be used in like literal virtual reality astronaut trainings, where you might need a specific scenario and you want to train people on that.
Speaker 3:So I think gaming will be a pipeline for people to get interested in that and then also a pipeline for training and simulation for you know real astronauts and people actually in the industry, and so that that's like a whole world that I think needs to be built out and needs to be world class and accessible to millions of people, and so you know we'd like to deliver on that.
Speaker 3:The other thing is, I think that a lot of the innovation can happen iteratively in the digital world.
Speaker 3:That, then, is a pipeline to physical manufacturing and product development.
Speaker 3:So I think that, with games, it's a cheap and easy way to test technology without spending physical resources on manufacturing and building, and doing that in a way where you can get a lot of the kinks worked out before you actually move it into physical prototyping and development out before you actually move it into physical prototyping and development.
Speaker 3:So we'd also like to be a hub for testing and innovation of early stage ideas and also ideas that come from unexpected places, because it's a lot more accessible to play a game than it is to go to an analog simulation in Utah or whatever. Play a game than it is to go to an analog simulation in Utah or whatever, and so like we want to basically open that up as well to to the masses. So, yeah, I mean those are kind of the ways I see basically gaming as as a front door to the space industry, because it's where people are right now. They're playing games right now are right now they're playing games right now and if we can capture their attention with really compelling gaming experiences, bring them into that world slowly, start getting them interested in the science, interested in the engineering. That is a pipeline for people to go into careers in space and also get like their certifications and get you know things that they would need to succeed yeah, it'll motivate them because they're gamers now.
Speaker 2:It'll be motivated and the science and the learning will become secondary, but it'll become the necessary pathway uh, pathway. Like. I wanted to be an astronaut and I did the reversing of okay, astronauts the commanders are usually test pilots and the test pilots they probably went through the Naval Academy or the Air Force Academy like reversing it back out. So I got all the way through the program to commercial, so I decided to not do that. But the chances are changed, the things are changing and how they recruit astronauts and I think there'll be more jobs in space and more ways to participate in being a part of this. And, to your point, as we go to Mars, talking to others, it's a different journey. We haven't really gone beyond the moon, the solar radiation. We have a lot of things to figure out, you know, which will hopefully benefit mankind here on earth as well. You know, what advice would you give a young professional or young persons who's interested in kind of combining their passion for gaming and space exploration?
Speaker 3:What would you you're giving the elementary or the high school talk to the kids, but it's enjoying the gaming experience and trying to step back and ask why you like it so much of stuff down, making a list, kind of thinking through that. That's a good starting point on what would make sense to do as a career or as a focus for work, because there's so many different aspects of it. Like you know, for me, I love all of the aspects of character customization and base building and like those things. I, I, I love it in games like Starfield and Assassin's Creed, and you know I'm I'm more, I'm bigger into RPG games. Um, and so you know that really, when I started this project, I just wanted to visualize a Mars city like that. I had an idea in my head of like this is what I want this to look like, and I want it to be interactive and fun and like be able to see the different elements and see how they fit together and like how you can create something like really cool looking so like that was what I was excited about. But you know, if you're really excited about strategy or you love, you know, the fast paced, competitive elements of you know, warzone or Fortnite, like those are things that can be.
Speaker 3:Those are like major departments in these, in these gaming studios that are just, you know, focused on these specific areas. So yeah, I mean, I think that's where I would go is like focus on what you're passionate about within, just when you're having fun. And then, in terms of the space element, I think, you know, hopefully playing our games inspires people to see what elements of space that they want to get involved in and, you know, I think, ideally, like what we're building gets to a point where we can help people sort of identify the career path that would make the most sense for them. That would make the most sense for them, for instance, using an in-game achievement system or a certification system to validate that someone has experience operating power equipment or operating managing, you know, greenhouses within our games and that has some weight in terms of a resume or training or certification that maybe even they list on LinkedIn one day. So like that's kind of maybe a couple of ways to think about it.
Speaker 2:So I'll do some rapid fires. We kind of wrap up the show. One thing I always like to ask, especially for multi-planetary civilizations since you're going to Mars, what are the two books, two pieces of music and two things you would bring?
Speaker 3:That's a good one. Two books, well, I think you have to bring the Hitchhiker's Guide. That'd be hilarious, that's great. And then maybe I don't't know something like dune would be fun, fun to bring. I feel like that has a mars vibe to it. Music I think you have to go with um one of the classics, like a mozart or beethoven, and then something like just off the wall like Biggie.
Speaker 2:There's definitely a lot of the questions I ask. I get this juxtaposition of classical and hip hop. It's fairly funny, yeah, and the things it's like we're not doing, like you know, naked and afraid, but it's like two things you would bring with you, you know, like physical, like you know things.
Speaker 3:I think, yeah, I mean you, you know like physical, like you know things. I think, yeah, I mean I'm very uh, I'm very interested in the economy of mars, and so the one thing I think would be important is, like this is not like a specific thing and it's probably a little bit too much for this question, but I just I think, like you need a cryptocurrency or you need like a infrastructure on Mars to run the economy, and I think that that's a lot different than how we think about the economy on Earth, where you have wallets and you have cash and you have physical currency, and it's all different. I think you need a unifying currency there, so I'd definitely bring stuff to do that. Um, yeah, I don't know what else.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's tough to narrow it down to two, no, it's totally fine, and that's always the challenge. That's the whole point. Uh, you know, and when you've, uh, the one thing, what's you know? You talked a lot about your career and your journey like what's, what are the one thing you learned that you wish you knew when you started.
Speaker 3:Um, that's it's important to like be. It's important to like really follow what you're passionate about, and I know a lot of people. Something that is very meaningful to you, I think, is I wish, I wish I had. I'm very happy and thankful for all of the experience I've had, but I didn't. I didn't realize time moves so quickly and every year that you're not working on sort of something you're super passionate about, I think it's important to do that as early on as possible. So, yeah, I think that that would be that's important.
Speaker 2:And that does end, kind of the. The final question, um, like, how do you is? I'd love to ask the legacy question do you know people that are younger don't even really much think about that, but as you obviously get older, you think about you know you have more years behind you than ahead of you and well, maybe with the future changes you got a lot more years. You'd never know, but you know how would you want your work to be remembered? What impact do you want to have on the world then? Maybe, even maybe, mars, other worlds as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I definitely I think that I'd love to have an impact of, of basically helping enable future human civilization on Mars and, um, you know, being one of the, the people that helps transition certain the, the current culture and will of humanity, uh, from focusing specifically on earth to focusing on beyond earth, um, and so that transition point to me is is critical and also, like that to me, if I could think about one thing to work on, regardless of if it's the games or if it's something else, it's how can we help humanity think about and getting inspired about what it's like to thrive on Mars?
Speaker 2:That's great. Well, how can people stay updated with you? Where can they find you on the interwebs and the latest developments that thrive on Mars?
Speaker 3:Yeah, thriveonmarscom is where all the games are all the information, and then we have Twitter. It's just Thrive on Mars there. Thrive on Mars is basically Twitter, telegram, discord and Medium, so all of that is probably the best. Um discord. We have amas every thursday at 2 pm where you can get updates from our team directly on um the games. And we have, uh outpost surge, which is coming uh, in the next month. That's going to be that turn-based game which will be on steam, so definitely check out for that. And then martian resident, which is the Unreal game that's coming later this year. So lots of exciting stuff happening. And, yeah, I would say socials are probably the best place to keep up to date.
Speaker 2:Great, and we'll definitely have you back when that launch comes about as well. So, hunter, thank you for your time today. It's great to have you and look forward to having you on again and talk to you soon.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thank you very much.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to Going and look forward to having you on again and talk to you soon. Yeah, thank you very much. Thanks for listening to Going Off World. You can find us on all the major podcast platforms and at wwwgoingoffworldcom, as well as on YouTube under Going Off World. See you next time.
