193 | Why Improbable had to build Somnia

Jon Jordan talks to Improbable CEO Herman Narula about why the UK game tech company decided it had to build its own blockchain. Called Somnia, its testnet is now live.

• [2:32] The Improbable genesis story: from Cambridge Uni to building games technology.
• [3:39] Building economies for virtual worlds means you need a blockchain for ownership.
• [4:54] Improbable's first success was The Multiplayer Guys, who worked on CoD, GTA, Fall Guys etc.
• [5:27] The biggest thing Improbable has learned is "the tenacity to pursue the mission".
• [5:44] The Improbable co-founders have been sanctioned by Russia due to their defence work.
• [6:59] The key thing for Improbable's MSquared tech is making the cost of operations so low.
• [8:19] Narula describes Improbable as a "venture builder" - it's a "company of companies".
• [9:56] What does MSquared do? It's a software platform to build large scale virtual worlds.
• [13:32] "We've always bet on the need for human beings to feel relatedness, even in games."
• [14:56] Why did Improbable have to design its own blockchain. Do we need another one?
• [15:32] The crypto space is obsessed with its token price. That's all they optimize for.
• [16:00] Somnia can handle 1 million transactions per second, with sub-second latency.
• [17:19] Improbable has almost a quarter of a billion dollars of cash.
• [19:08] "Pirate Nation's network costs are astronomical. It would save millions of dollars on Somnia."
• [20:55] Our focus isn't getting existing web3 games to move to Somnia, but new games.
• [22:23] The current problem for games is cost of UA and cost of development.
• [23:34] "I couldn't care less what the Somnia token price is. That's not how we make money."
• [25:31] Blockchain games now is like The Hunger Games - people fighting over a small amount of value.
• [27:39] How big a deal will AI agents be in future? How is Improbable using AI for development?
• [28:34] AI agents aren't going to have bank accounts. They're going to have crypto wallets.
• [31:02] In an post-AGI world, "Games are going to become a critical industry for human health."
• [35:17] If you're an EVM app, you change one line of code and move to Somnia.