by 0xfcacace2713d41c02666e2643e5583793196c935 (WonderZone)
Should the following Tier 5: up to $120,000 USD, 6 months vesting (1 month cliff) grant in the Gaming category be approved?
Abstract
WonderMine is a social play-to-earn game where you mine meteors, collect resources and craft upgrades and rewards in the form of wearables and other NFTs. WonderMine continues to be one of the most popular locations in Decentraland, with an active and passionate community and over 1400 players per day.
In 2023, we aim to take WonderMine to the next level by introducing new multiplayer mechanics, new categories of meteors, even more wearables, enabling WonderMine as an event space and giving a fresh new look to the WonderZone Park area.
Grant size
120,000 USD
Beneficiary address
0xfcacAcE2713D41c02666E2643E5583793196c935
Email address
Description
WonderZone began in 2017, just as an idea by Radix to create an Amusement Park district in Decentraland. That became reality in 2018 and by 2019 the park was filled with various hackathon-winners and mini-games.
WonderMine quickly became one of the most popular Decentraland games, and has become something of a staple. WonderMine is one of the first places new players visit when they enter Decentraland for the first time, a feat we’re very proud of. WonderMine playership increased steadily over time. We currently support about 1,400 players per day (DAU).
Since the WonderMine alpha first launched in June 2020:
- Over 300,000 unique players have played (mining at least one meteor)
- Hit a peak DAU of over 10K players (December 2021) without performance issues
- Nearly 20K wearables (19,865) given to players who crafted them
- Over 3,600 WonderZone Pickaxe NFTs given out
- Over 20 “2X Loot Drop” events with 300 to 1000 players attending
- Over a dozen different collab events with projects like DG, Vroomway, MetaParty and MetaKey
WonderZone received a Tier 6 grant in January 2022 with a very ambitious roadmap. We planned to hire a new developer but that didn’t pan out, so the full roadmap was more than our small team could accomplish in 6 months. Even so that grant let some of us work full-time, and since we didn’t end up hiring another game dev the funds lasted us almost a full year, instead of 6 months.
Here is what we achieved in 2022:
- Developed a custom NFT smart contract (audited by Solidity Finance: Wonder Zone Smart Contract Audit by Solidity Finance)
- Released the WonderZone Games NFT collection (https://opensea.io/collection/wonderzonegames)
- Released 5 NFT pickaxes, with more on the way
- Auto-minting when players craft an NFT pickaxe
- Innovative contract supports per-item attributes and leveling-up
- In-game highscores (level + meteors mined)
- Level-locked crafting
- Limited item crafting (one per player)
- Updated UI
- Improved meteor loot pop-up
- Pickaxe switching functionality
- Backend event manager (work in progress)
- Hub for WZ staff with data dashboards
- Easier and quicker to host events in WonderMine
- Faster support ticket processing
- WonderZone Guild House building
- A central hub for the WonderZone Amusement park
- More buildings in development
- Many, many, many new WonderZone wearables
- Seasonal wearables, an organized way of releasing wearable collections
- Each season contains 10 new wearables every 2 months
- Offered Seasonal Airdrop Pass NFTs, another step towards self-sufficiency for WonderZone
- Hired part-time back-end developer/Azure expert
- Refactored back-end/server infrastructure for performance and better internal testing
- Improved CoinCart process
We have learned a lot in 2022. We feel more confident in our abilities to deliver on our more realistic goals and milestones. These are features we believe will elevate the current singleplayer mining experience and help us attract new players to the WonderMine game and to Decentraland.
Our goals for WonderMine were to create a game that’s fun to come back to every day and to become a social hub where people hang out in Decentraland, mining and chatting. We feel we’ve been successful with these goals. Our high player retention numbers put us in the top 75% of all games (not just metaverse games). Many of our top players have been playing WonderMine for over two years.
Specification
WonderMine is a social hub, but the gameplay is entirely single-player. Players only see the meteors that fall in their own instance of the scene. With the next roadmap we want to encourage multiplayer gameplay.
The first step is to enable shared, synchronized meteors, so everyone can see the same drop. This would make all active players rush over to a single location to get the loot first.
Shared Meteors
We want to add complexity to the current meteor system, with new categories and tiered meteors that require different levels to mine, including a few meteors that will require collaboration and multiple people to mine at the same time. These meteors will be full of juicy loot! Encouraging players to rush over to these new meteors adds a level of competition to the gameplay, and also requires teamwork to get the loot.
Players will still see their own meteors fall at a similar rate. But sometimes a larger, special meteor will drop at the same location for everyone in the scene. The special meteor will require at least 10 players to mine it before it breaks open. Then all 10 players will receive a better-than-normal loot drop for their cooperative mining help.
Shared meteors add a new level of player cooperation to the game, which should encourage more interaction and socializing among players. It also adds a competitive element, since you have to be one of the first 10 players to get there.
After we deliver the first tier of shared meteors, we have ideas for expanding to other specialty meteor tiers with different in-game mechanics to make WonderMine even more fun.
The Town Square
We have begun building a new town square which is going to be a central hub in WonderZone. The square is where new players will spawn and get introduced to WonderZone and all of our games. A place for players to socialize, trade, craft and quest.
We also want to create a venue with a big screen and stage near WonderMine for hosting events in WonderZone Park. This lets us pursue enhanced collaborations with other Decentraland projects and outside musical artists who can help attract new players. Our strength is in retaining players once they engage with our game. If we can attract new players to an event we can keep many of them playing for a long time to come.
Seasonal Wearables
We have reorganized our wearable releases to be seasonal. We create up to 10 wearables and release them at the same time in the crafting machine. Each season contains 1 Mythic, 3-6 Legendaries and 3-6 Epics. The total craftable supply is 3k-6k per season. This means there are always wearables available for players to grind for when mining.
We want to keep being a hub for new players to socialize and craft their first NFTs for free. Bi-monthly seasonal wearable releases will ensure there are always new wearables for our players.
We recently introduced Seasonal Airdrop Pass NFTs for players who want to collect all of the wearables in a season. The Airdrop Passes for Season 1 cost 0.3 ETH each and sold out in about 30 minutes. Airdrop pass holders get all the wearables in a seasonal collection. We only sell 10 passes per season and it’s the only way to get the seasonal mythic wearable.
Nearly all of our wearables can be crafted for free. Airdrop pass revenues are a small fraction of the cost to create the wearables, but it’s a step in the right direction of becoming a sustainable business.
Personnel
The core team consists of four people with different experience and expertise. Our collaborative experience includes front and back-end software development, game design and game development, character design and all aspects of 3D modeling. Experience aside, we’re a group of passionate game enthusiasts, and have been working on WonderZone next to our full-time jobs prior to receiving funding.
- Rob Dixon (Radix), Co-founder, lead developer
- Chestnutbruze, Co-founder, 3D artist
- Lew, Co-founder, 3D artist
- maruudn, Community manager and game developer
In addition to the core team, we also have an additional 3D modeler that has designed some of our most iconic wearables, such as the Steampunk outfit, plus an extra back-end developer that works part time to ensure things are running smoothly behind the scenes.
- Maricela Perdomo (Maricela), 3D artist
- Kim G., Back-end developer and Azure expert
Roadmap and milestones
Milestones
- Shared meteors
- Stretch goal: More shared meteor tiers, rarer meteors with more valuable materials
- 3 bi-monthly seasonal wearables drops (30+ wearables)
- New NFT Pickaxes
- Town Square and updated park layout
- Enhance WonderMine scene for events (add big screen and music streaming)
- Allow CoinCart purchases using Polygon Mana
Budget breakdown
- Server costs: 5,100 USD
- Software licenses: 2,680 USD
- Wearables submission fees: 4,500 USD
- Developers: 46,800 USD
- 3D Artists: 43,200 USD
- Community management & support: 14,400 USD
- Cushion/Contingency: 3,320 USD
Total: 120,000 USD
Sustainability
We aren’t profitable yet. Our overhead is significantly higher than our revenue. We address this with WonderCoin sales and the recently introduced Seasonal Airdrop Passes, and refactoring server code to reduce costs. It will take more time to become a sustainable business.
In recent months, we have been able to increase our wearables production, thanks to the DAO grant letting some of us go full-time. We need new wearables and NFT Pickaxes to keep WonderMine running. Without DAO funding we can’t keep making enough free wearables for our community. Nor could we add new features to the game, since ongoing maintenance and event support requires all the part-time resources we have.
Please support us to keep WonderMine moving forward and attracting new players, and to help us build a sustainable game within Decentraland.