Many important fundamental decisions going on right now, but I just had to get these thoughts down because at some point gaming will become essentially important to the DAO.
The reason launchpads work (@Harry’s idea is great) is
- they bring IP to a place and let the community decide what gets funded
- they help a platform manage the risk of investing in IP
- they naturally attract more people because more ideas in a place = more likely there’s something you’re gonna like in that place.
So. There will definitely be games that will come to the DAO through Forj’s launchpad. But there’s a way to get more attention to the DAO from games using the launchpad ethos in other forms.
I discussed in a previous post the huge audience there is for minigames. I’ll add to that idle games, card games, 8bit era games, and puzzle games. Everybody wants to make the web3 Call of Duty, which is fine, but you can use these other game markets to build up clout, hype and momentum for a big release.
The other thing is not all games that come from here need to be ape-themed or even anthropomorphic. You brand yourself just as good if you just put little reminders of your brand in-game. Like when you hit the trash can in Streets of Rage Web3 Powered by ApecoinDAO, you get an Apecoin that’s worth real $$ instead of just a gold bag that adds to your score. Think Stan Lee and Marvel movies. You see him for like 3 seconds in a little cameo and that’s it.
One of the ecosystems I’m looking at closely is Ronin. That’s right, Axie. It’s a big fat lie that Axie isn’t flourishing right now, because it is. The only reason people say it isn’t is because the fall was so precipitous. But their events are still packed, and they have developers building on Axie SDKs right now. FUN games. Memes will come from those games that are backed by the community, and some enterprising developer will make a spinoff. Eventually, you get to your Slenderman and a character or storyline takes off that you can justify putting millions of dollars behind for that 3D VR AI deepfake ML web3 7.1K AAA experience.
Non Fungible Arcade is an excellent project that is going to blow up. They put the minigame experience in a 90s arcade style. I’m sure they’ll have a meme grow organically from that, and they’ll put money behind it and get their AAA title with less risk.
If the DAO doesn’t just buy Newgrounds, it should invest in a platform that incentivizes devs to bring their IP. As far as rewards go, I say bring back the old arcade experience of winning tickets. But instead of tickets, it’s $APE. And if you die in game, $APE is your extra life or continue. So there’s a sink mechanism.
There’s also the idea of episodic games. If any of you were around in the early days of PC gaming, like Apogee Games when the VERY first Duke Nukem and Wolfenstein 3D game out, you’ll know this method. This was before season passes piped subscriptions directly into your home. Devs make a game and split it into 6 parts. You call the company on the phone and order the first part for free. IF you want 2-6, you pay for those and get them delivered in the mail. So the website takes pre-orders, basically (in $APE). If the dev says “ok, that’s enough for me to make the game,” he gets the $APE when it ships. This could be a way to turn minigames into larger stories and see which games actually drive engagement enough to earn big investment.
Brain dump complete. Time to go to bed (not! I’m up all night thinking about web3 systems)