[DAO:cb21d74] Meta GamiMall Developement and Operation for 6 months

Governance
1

by 0x9b3ae2dd9eaad174cf5700420d4861a5a73a2d2a (MetaGamiMall)

Should the following $38,800 grant in the In-World Content category be approved?

Abstract

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Meta GamiMall is a gamified metaverse mall. After 2+ years of hard work, we utilized multiple events, especially the MetaMine seasons, to showcase our capability in effectively attracting brands to Decentraland and generating relatively large and sustainable traffic. And we have consistently worked towards reducing costs to make our project more sustainable by asking for smaller and smaller grants.

Grant size

38,800 USD in DAI

Project duration

6 months

Beneficiary address

0x654387b2c3A4E8E95fa13b03A48a24285503cD8c

Email address

metalivestudio@gmail.com

Description

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Main Achievements During the Last Grant Period in Six Months

- Top 3 trendy scenes in Decentralnd for most of the time in the past 6 months (feel free to verify now)

- 6,000+ new players onboarded to Decentraland, which is 20%+ more than what we promised in the last grant (Based on Playfab).

- 220+ DAU (Daily Active Users) for Meta GamiMall Coins collecting via Main Scene, Side unified Scenes, and Coins smart wearables (Based on Playfab).

- 22+ brands onboarded via 2 MetaMine Season 3.

- 500+ wearables claimed in the Mall.

- 50M+ coins were collected during the last grant period.

- 100k+ views on Twitter solely for MetaMine-related tweets.

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What’s Next?

1/ Onboard more brands and players via MetaMine Season 4

As always, we will onboard both Decentraland community projects and outside projects into MetaMine with their wearable sponsorship for the players, making announcements together to expose Decentraland.

2/Provide diverse types of incentives to attract both creators and players

Rather than purely relying on providing wearable rewards as incentives, we plan to add new mechanisms and host more events with rewards to attract more contributors and players. For example, a long-term collecting game contest, builder contest, social media contest etc.

3/ Host more small-scale events to provide diverse experiences

Other than the MetaMine large-scale event, we aim to create a bi-weekly event with our collaborators and bring their community into Decentraland. This will help to provide a more sustainable excitement on top of our basic experience, which will in the end contribute to user retention.

Meta GamiMall Project Strategy

Goal: Brands, Users, Retention

Explanation: Meta GamiMall is a Metaverse mall with game features, rather than a game. Our primary goal is to onboard as many brands and players into Decentraland as possible and keep them engaged. Instead of focusing on a highly entertaining experience, we concentrate on providing players with sufficient incentives, diverse routes to obtain the incentives, and a fair system to encourage prolonged participation. Simultaneously, we guide players to explore promotional materials for brands, increasing exposure and their willingness to participate in our experience. We will break down these details here due to the text limitation: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dfYj4Nv0H1lUH\_0oHgOMnJGbaGlrt33mP8kxcO0m5yE/edit?usp=sharing

Economic Sustainability

Although this is the 3rd time we have requested a grant, we have been working on our projects for 2 years and 3 months. Due to the absence of incentives for traffic generation from DAO or the Foundation, we still rely on DAO funds to operate our project, onboard brands, and maintain the user base. **However, we continue to enhance the efficiency of the fund by requesting smaller grants while providing the same level of contribution to Decentraland (both traffic and brand onboarding).**We sincerely hope this rationale makes sense to you as we attempt to save the budget for the DAO while ensuring our project can continue.

Roadmap and milestones

Month 1 Rebasing

  • Scene optimization (Model simplification, interaction simplification etc.)
  • Expereince level up (Repolish the leaderboard feature to fit in the need of our new seasonal contest etc.)
  • 2 bi-week events (A community contest + Onboard a new community, the same as most of the below bi-week events)
  • Social Media and Community Management
  • Debug

Month 2 MetaMine Season 4 Preparation

  • MetaMine Season 4 documents preparation (Pitch deck and videos)
  • MetaMine Season 4 Brands BD & Onboarding
  • Expereince level up (Adding a Lucky Wheel mini experience to provide some extra surprise for players etc.)
  • 2 bi-week events
  • Community Management
  • Debug

Month3 MetaMine Season 4 Preparation

  • MetaMine Season 4 Brands BD & Onboarding
  • Brands Materials preparation including making wearables and advertising materials etc.
  • 2 bi-week events
  • Community Management
  • Debug

Month 4 MetaMine Season 4 Pre-warm

  • Release the Teaser video
  • Releasing advertisements to some niche metaverse community.
  • Brands Materials preparation including making wearables, advertising materials etc.
  • Listing wearables models in the mall and adding them to our reward-claiming smart contract.
  • Promotion for MetaMine Season 4 on social media with all the brands onboard
  • 2 bi-week events
  • Social Media and Community Management
  • Debug

Month 5 MetaMine Season 4 Launch

  • Emergency Preparedness： Based on the previous experience, due to the large traffic that we might have. The start month of MetaMine Season 4 will be full of unexpected situations and bugs, thus need to reserve more time for this part.
  • 2 bi-week events (MetaMine Season 4 serious events)
  • Social Media and Community Management

Month 6 MetaMine Season 4 Ongoing

  • MetaMine Season 4 Series Event with some of the onboarded brands.
  • Develop at least one collaborative game with our partner using our unified scene technology.
  • 2 bi-week events
  • Social Media and Community Management
  • Debug

Vote on this proposal on the Decentraland DAO

View this proposal on Snapshot

2 Likes
2

Although this is the 3rd time we have requested a grant, we have been working on our projects for 2 years and 3 months. Due to the absence of incentives for traffic generation from DAO or the Foundation, we still rely on DAO funds to operate our project, onboard brands, and maintain the user base.

While I appreciate the dedication your team has demonstrated in maintaining your project over the years, I strongly disagree regarding the reliance on DAO funds for ongoing operations, as highlighted in your grant request quote above. I strongly believe that continuous dependence on DAO funds for a project that has been operational for a considerable period is not a sustainable approach. This reliance shows a more significant underlying issue that needs to be addressed.

In my view, the initial purpose of DAO funding should be to assist projects in their inception stages, providing a foundation for them to develop self-sustaining and profitable models. The current trend of projects depending on DAO funds for prolonged periods and for multiple large grant requests, is not a viable long-term strategy. This situation underscores a critical need: the platform itself requires further development and enhancement.

Comparatively, other platforms offer creators various monetization options, which is a direction we should be really pushing towards. Our platform needs to evolve to a state where it can efficiently support a large user base, which would enable monetization opportunities such as the sale of in-game items, NFTs, subscription game passes, advertising, and sponsorships. These avenues should be the primary means for a project to achieve profitability and self-sufficiency.

While it is reasonable for promising projects to seek and receive DAO grants for initial support, it is very important that these projects do not become reliant over the long term on such funding for their survival. Our focus should shift towards allocating funds and development efforts to enhance the platform as much as possible at this stage of Decentraland, until we get to the development point where the platform can support diverse monetization strategies for creators. Until we achieve this, we risk wasting a significant portion of the DAO grants going towards content and events. This strategic realignment is essential for the long-term sustainability and success of our platform and the projects building here.

Having said this, I would support a small minimum grant just to cover server operating costs for current projects that are showing long term potential already. Since the platform is obviously not at the stage yet where projects are able to remain profitable long term. This would require full disclosure / receipts showing the server operating costs for the project.

3 Likes
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Hi MetaGamiMall!

Before I vote I’d love to have your feedback:

You’ve had two successful proposals so far, totaling $275,400.00 that you have received, correct? If this proposal passes, that would put you at $314,200.00 total DAO funds received to create this game.

How much of this has been open-sourced and returned to the community?

4 Likes
4

I will most likely vote yes due to MetaGami is typically the 2nd highest traffic generator in DCL, but this is eye-opener. I mean I can work almost 10 years off that money if I had to, and you see what I have for $0 my game is going to be insane for 300k. Although one of highest traffic generator I can make this game in 8 weeks if someone have a laser tag v1.7 to my head. For instance I offer bingo for 40k, it’s going to be 4 million on this scale. The tasks here don’t sound like ground breaking, new game, new features exactly, mostly fluff. That being said 38k for multiple people for 6 months and one of the highest traffic estates - easy yes. This will be like delete monster hall if fail. MetaGami is iconic top metrics scene. Players are usually sleeping in here, but still it’s a valid strategy - we can call it park and earn. Before I vote how we can get laser tag v1.7 as one of the prizes? You know it’s a fun scene to play in and already on SDK7.

2 Likes
5

Hi @szjanko Thank you for your honest comment and allow me to quote the full paragraph here otherwise, it would be a little bit misleading, especially for the part after “However”.

First, I agree with you on the first point and we are actually becoming less and less dependent on DAO funds based on the number of budgets we requested each time. We spend 2 more years learning what actions can get brands and users to Decentraland, and what cannot, and this experience ensures that we can use the limited resources to create higher value. Also, we reduced the team size which also brought down the budget.

Second, i want to mention that a decent amount of the budget will be allocated to the players and DCL creators via our reward budget, for a long time, I think we have provided the community too little, especially for players. They spend the longest time farming and playing, yet getting the least payback. And I think that is also a huge part of the reason why we are having fewer and fewer users. And this part of the budget is aimed at improving the current situation.

Third, I hope it makes sense to you that onboarding brands and maintaining a user base at our scale will take time, people, and resources, a lot of things can not be pushed without them. If we just leave everything here without new rewards, new events or new updates, the players we accumulated for 2+ years will be gone, don’t you think it would be a pity for Decentraland to invest time and money in us, and now when we have the ability to contribute back, and suddenly shut it down?

The platform is very immature in every way, but our project shows that even with the current platform, there is a way to attract users and brands. To be honest, isn’t the ultimate goal of improving the platform is attracting users? If it is, then this is what we are doing. But I do agree the platform is important, and we have the seasonal budget to decide the use of funds, if I remember correctly, the platform already takes the largest share. And the In-world content still needs to grow as well, especially for the projects that have shown their value in the past few years. (And ofc, we need new content as well)

Lastly, you are right about the incentive structure or scheme being missing here in Decentraland, and we don’t have enough player base to create a sustainable business model (yet). Also, I believe every person who has tried to look for outside fundraising knows it is not easy to persuade others to invest in content within Decentraland. In my opinion, Decentraland is basically the only party who has a reason to do this (for now). So that is another reason for this grant, please allow us to be alive, so that when the metaverse trend gets back, we can be able to become self-sustainable either through fundraising or creating sustainable revenue based on the player’s market.

Those will be my personal opinion, hope it makes sense.

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Hi Canessa,

Thank you for your comment before voting! And the first and second questions are confirmed correct. It looks like a big number, but the budget will be for almost 3 years, and during the peak time in the beginning, we got nearly 10 people working on the project. I thought about creating another project to make the total number look smaller, but since our model seems to be working so i think it is sensible to continue.

For the last question, yes it is 100% open source, and the GitHub link is attached at the very beginning of this proposal as quoted.

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Thank you for the comment !!!

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If it were a snake it would have bit me! :sweat_smile: Thank you for this!

1 Like
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No problem, any update on if we can get laser tag everywhere v1.7 as prize there?

1 Like
10

MetaGamiMall is one of the most iconic scenes in Decentraland and many users play in it, for me it is obvious that we must continue supporting this project.

We cannot allow large projects to reduce their quality or activity because they do not have the support of the DAO.

1 Like
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Thank you for your comment, friend!

1 Like
12

Would love to provide some extra insights into this project, especially regarding the botting or multi-account topics:

1/ We never and will never use any sort of bots.

2/ Our system has a natural system to discourage overwhelming multi-account playing. Based on our system, a player has to use both coins and other materials to claim valuable rewards. The coins can be collected manually (Faster) or by AFK by staying on a pad(Very slow), however, materials like rock have to be collected manually. So that means even if you create 10 accounts collecting coins AFK every day, you still need to manually farm rocks to be able to claim valuable rewards, and this leads to an outcome that it makes no sense for players to create too many accounts since they do not have the time to manually farm rocks for 10 accounts… Even though we noticed a few players got 2 -3 accounts that’s fairly common across all Decentraland, which is also in an acceptable level.

3/ Yes, a lot of players would stay in scene AFK coins using their main accounts when they are away, and when we don’t have an event, they might be not so responsive. But this does not affect the fairness of the game (check above), and this guarantees that whenever we get a new event, they will have a much higher chance to come back, which we believe its a common strategy that we can see in a lot of scenes in Decentraland.

4/We have an anti-multi-realm farming system to protect the fairness of playing.

2 Likes
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Hello, the team has built a really impressive game. It is always on top, so user engagement is there. The price tag is really large so when do you anticipate this A) being a self-sustainable model and B) profitable? Do you have a forecast to determine whether you will need to request future grant funds?
Thank you,
Jenn

2 Likes
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Hi, @DedHeadJ Thanks for the kind words and the question.

So in short, we aim to become self-sustainable and ofc hope for profits in the future. This will largely depend on the player’s number of DCL as well as if there is any incentive programme for traffic generation (Think about Youtube or any other similar UGC platform) . We have to have at least one of these 2 points, and it seems like the latter one is easier to realise in the short term.

However, we understand we cannot rely on DAO in the long term so at least the basic guarantee here is we will ask less and less budget but maintain the same level of quality and engagement, which is what we are doing. Meanwhile, we can trigger some discussion of a platform-level incentives system (maybe continue the unfinished proposal by @yemel ) that might help to solve the issue for many other projects in DCL

Hope this answer can make sense to you.

1 Like
15

Thank you for your reply, I will vote yes because whatever you are doing is working based on what is available to you even though DCL is at a low interaction. I hope that the foundation can make Marketing these games a priority. Even @InJesterr game is going to waste eventually because there is no support from the DAO in marketing and support after the fact.

3 Likes
16

idk if I just read a compliment or not :saluting_face::flushed:

1 Like
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Huge fan of this project! The requested amount seems reasonable taking into account the clarity and feasibility of the milestones.

Hope it passes :slight_smile:

2 Likes
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Thank you again and indeed, we will trigger some discussion for sure in the future via a proposal.

1 Like
19

Thank you so much for the consent!

1 Like
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I changed my vote to yes, somehow I missed the part that this was all open sourced, looked through the code and it looks very well organized and easy to follow for others to learn from. I still stand behind my statement that I don’t think projects should depend on DAO funding over and over again for the long term, hopefully we can work towards getting the platform to a place where projects building here are able to monetize and become self sustainable.

2 Likes