Proposal - DAO backed, Ethereum Powered, Gaming Ecosystem

[nvmr]

Hi @CerebralFix, you clearly describe in the first sentence the need you aim to fill and state what you propose in the second, followed by a bullet list of goals. That resonates with me because I don't have to figure out myself what it is you want to do.

Other aspects I like:

• Concise problem description
• Proposed sub-contracts look like they would be useful
• Revenue stream for the DAO from contract use
• Roadmap looks reasonable to me
• Effort estimate (FTE*time), too
• Team has industry experience
• It looks like you guys really want to do it

Now for the objections:

• Risk assessment. You are basically saying "we know that games have a 19/20 probability to fail, but we are good and love games so ours will be the in the 1/20 that succeed". Sorry, doesn't convince me.

• Your estimates for labour cost seem to be very high with 290'000 NZ$ per person and year at the current ETH market price. The median software developer salary is in the area of 65k NZ$ p.a. How do you justify your rates?

• Your company would not only be taking no risk at all, but profit considerably from the development alone. So this proposal seems to fall into the category "We think we have a good idea. Give us your money to test it."

Overall I believe the idea has potential to generate recurring revenue for the DAO if executed well. Do I think the proposed deal is a good one? Sorry, no.

The key element contract framework (the part you call TES) can probably be developed at a fraction of the cost proposed (50% by your own estimates, even less with better rates)

It should be the role of game development companies to invest in building games on top of this framework.

[CerebralFix]

Brilliant feedback!

Thank you for taking the time to read and critique, it is most appreciated and valuable. To the objections you raise:

Costings and risk taking comments: We don't (or at least didn't plan to) share in any upside from TES or own it, it's just for the DAO, so we have priced in at our standard rate of NZD$135 an hour (USD$95), which fall in the lower end of IT contractor rates in New Zealand of $120 - $180 NZD. That's important to us because we would need to give up that value to build this for the DAO.

The reason we didn't think it appropriate to take a share of the upside is because we wanted developers to get more of the revenues.

Regarding the comment:

The key element contract framework (the part you call TES) can probably be developed at a fraction of the cost proposed (50% by your own estimates, even less with better rates)

We rebuilt Appstrip and built the core tech behind the Imagicademy platform, so we are pretty secure in the knowledge that we have these costings correct. Therefore, I conclude that we have failed to properly explain / describe the complexities involved, which looking back at the draft does seem fair.

We ultimately believe you are correct in saying:

It should be the role of game development companies to invest in building games on top of this framework.

However to get the ecosystem going it will need a big cross-platform game specifically built for these tools, that focuses on converting players to the Ethereum economy. We don't have to be the company to make this, but someone needs to, and the cost of such a production sits outside our ability to pay for. What we have put forward in the Exemplar Game, is what we believe we can get to work despite the 1 in 20 rate fail rate. We have clearly failed to get that this across (or instil any convidence) considering:

Risk assessment. You are basically saying "we know that games have a 19/20 probability to fail, but we are good and love games so ours will be the in the 1/20 that succeed". Sorry, doesn't convince me.

Perhaps it might have been prudent to mention that our first Tower Defense game enjoyed 7.5million plays, or that the unit economics in our recent games are around $15 USD per paying player, per day. Epic fail on us for that oversight, we will that fix up in the next iteration of our proposal.

Again, thank you very much for your comments, I hope my comments have gone some way to bridging the gap in our understands.

[thecryptofiend]

I personally don't think there is any future for this. It would be better to get Steam to accept payment in ether.

[dsmalone]

Great proposal! Gaming and digital tokens (whether Ether, Bitcoin, or other) are so perfectly made for each other. So many people miss the point (like Steam accepting bitcoin) that paying for the games is trivial, but rewarding players, paying developers, moving digital value around a game as easy as shooting monsters on the wall that's where the magic will happen.

Atari through the use of games introduced the mass market to computers. Games will also introduce the masses to digital currencies and it appears your company could be the first.

I only have 2 questions:

1) Your team appears well qualified regarding all aspects of gaming (design, game play, etc) but do you have the technical skills to build the "platform" upon which the games will be played?

2) Have you considered narrowing the scope of your project to something smaller i.e. simply incorporate Ether rewards into one of your existing games to gauge the markets reaction first ?

Love the direction of your proposal and I would be a backer.

Sincerely,

Dale Malone.

[CerebralFix]

Thank you, if the DAO could get Steam on board, then that would be really big, for all of us!

[CerebralFix]

Thank you for your support @dsmalone,

To answer your two questions:

1) Our platform building expertise; our business has an even split between building game product and platforms. Most recently we completed and launched the TGOMA platform. The goal of TGOMA was to reimagine trampolining and take it digital. This is a platform that serves up games inside an App on Google Play and Apple's App Store. It also connects to the hardware on the trampolines that track jumping and roll that info up into an API to help game developers build new games more easily, it was tricky new tech that took two years to comercialise. Additionally we have built other platforms like Appstrip as well as a rehabilitation platform for stroke and head trauma victims, IAMABLE.

2) You make a great point, and we will be, in conjunction with the Examplar Game, releasing 5 other games should this proposal be sucessful. Some of these will be a port across to this platform, some will be new, all will be smaller and paid for by us. We didn't make a big deal about it in the proposal, but we are very excited about it.

Again, thank you for your support.

[Jeronimo]

You are not understanding the proposal then. This is a brilliant proposal that will enable rapid growth in cross platform gaming of all types and provide the tools that game studios need to be succesfull in this space. Collaberation is what is required and this proposal enables that along with huge scope for growth and good returns to the DAO.

[nogo10]

Awsome, of course, what's not to like: we all love games..

But I have a question, in this day and age of commodity free game silos..and your , obviously, viable experience in developing games, WHY would it cost 90,000ETH to port your Examplar tower game (you admit to have made many, many times), into an ether based token in game currency?

[nogo10]

We ultimately believe you are correct in saying:

It should be the role of game development companies to invest in building games on top of this framework.

If that is the case why are you charging a considerable sum to port some games on to the platform you would also bill the TheDAO to build..? The Examplar Game should be your cost: a sample, if you will, to prove your platform works as intended..

Look, I appreciate and admire and understand that building anything involves complexities (sometimes unforeseen) to deliver on performance/quality.. But I hope you understand your proposal costing needs to be reworked..

[thecryptofiend]

I am fully understanding it. That is why it will fail.

[CerebralFix]

The same was said for flash games on web, even worse there because there was no way to monetize at the beginning, same for Facebook where people wouldn't even acknowledge that Zynga was a games company.

However if you can get Steam onboard, you are right, we wouldn't need to do this.

[CerebralFix]

Sorry Nogo10, we are not porting, it's an HTML5 based build from scratch, on a new game. We are porting and providing 5 other games though, that we are paying for. We have built many games costing more than this for web and mobile, this is pretty much the cost to deliver games at this scale.

[CerebralFix]

The platform needs a game that can act as the marketing tool, an attractant to the platform. Now that said it doesn't even have to be our Exemplar game, any similar scale game with the same bones will give the platform a fighting chance. So we will need to find someone willing to give it a shot, somehow.

As for the reworking costs, what would your comments be if we halved the cost and in return took half the revenues? I would really like to get your thoughts on this idea.

[nvmr]

Sorry Nogo10, we are not porting, it's an HTML5 based build from scratch, on a new game

For the pilot game, wouldn't it be less risk to port an existing title that already has a player community? Probably cheaper to do, too.

[CerebralFix]

Yes, that could be a great way to go as well, pros are that it is cheaper, quicker and to a degree it would be a known quantity in terms of comparing the performance of this market against another established marketplace, the reason we are interested in porting a few of our existing games.

We still feel like there would need a large "flagship" game to power the platform, to make it more attractive to game developers. Unfortunately, I don't know that folks like Supercell (with their title Clash of the Clans) will stray from their current business plans, but if they were to that would be big for us all.

[nogo10]

Look, I am Nogo10's son, an expert in playing video games , I can test your video games and see how much there worth, and if kids like me will ACTUALLY enjoy . Not done, HOW IN THE WORLD DO YOU COMPETE WITH CoC ( Clash of Clans ). That game is to amazing! You should compete with Tetris or something . Anyways, this was by Nogo10's son ( I'm 11 ) so PLEASE, don't take take this 100% seriously, take it 101% seriously.

[Wolfenris]

From my point of view (fixed odds games for Real Money) this platform is absolutely necessary and long overdue.
I know these guys and have helped them with this proposal and had some of the input in the platform architecture which is all about addressing pains and gains for teams that would like to build games for Real Money.
My team would be first to contribute to this platform by adding new games at no cost to anyone but ourselves, as our goal is to get Real Money Games to market and diversify and change the current status of the online gaming where the current few content providers have lion-share of the market with very little innovation and diversification of product.
At the same time anything that is not a slot machine or a table game struggles to get regulated, certified and promoted in current Online Casino space. There is tremendous cost and time delay to get product to market, also with current marketing cost (10-20x higher than social games) of acquiring new users the small studio is often not in position to promote & grow their own titles and is instead required to build products for executives rather than us, players who want better products but who are not finding them.
There are two other prospective proposals on DAO for gambling industry: Tronn and Peerplays but both of them are addressing more eSports, tournament type of Real Money platform, with peer-to-peer gameplay using smart contracts being promoted whether it is MMO or a on-chain Casino Card (presumably Poker) game involved, both of these do not address the fixed odds game integration solution where gameplay itself is powered by provably-fair blockchain based gaming platform like this one.
Keep it up guys and let’s build this thing!

[nogo10]

Well, like my son said while I was AFK, I think we need to see some realistic projections of cash flow.. to outlay that much .. I understand you do games for big brands (eg.Disney) for whom such games may be part of their advertising/site traffic budget (am I right?) rather than indie game development. It might make more sense as @nvmr suggest to port one of your better performing games (with traffic numbers ) and port it : that would save considerable time, cost and deliver a PoC in less than a year..

Now for the platform, have a look around the forum , there are some here who are developing on their own dime : It would be good to see a corner of TheDAO devoted to frameworks and platforms that would ramp up Dapp development and wider acceptance of crypto..

I really wish your efforts a great success for all of us.

[technoshaman]

I am very excited about the concepts that your white paper explores. If successful, this is something that could revolutionize gaming in many ways in the future. For instance, players of competitive "tournament" shooter gamers could win jackpots for consistently being the best. Of course, the concept is to start with small mobile games and gambling apps and then build up an ecosystem of games. I get it and it's very exciting. As someone who does not know much about the costs of contracting these types of professional products, I can't really speculate on whether the price of $4.1 million is realistic or not.

My recommendation to the DAO is that we should hire a contracting expert who works for the DAO's interests and researches all the contracts to make sure that we are getting a square deal. We also need a security expert to make sure our code is not hacked or exploited. We also probably need to have a tech industry lawyer on retainer to make sure we don't vote ourselves into a lawsuit, especially when we are breaking new ground.

For instance, gambling is highly regulated in the US. We are likely to attract a lot of negative attention if we integrate gambling in a way that is not done cautiously and professionally with legal assistance.

[CerebralFix]

Like having a due diligence partner for the DAO, that seems like a great idea for DAO and contractor alike.