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.