[DAO:df6ce92] Butterfly Prawn Farm (BPF) Development and Expansion

Governance
1

by 0x017fbadca2dbc267bb046624f23831662a6fd718 (BPVerse)

Should the following $120,000 grant in the In-World Content category be approved?

Abstract

At Butterfly Prawn Farm (BPF), we created an unprecedented Free-To-Play (F2P), Play-to-Earn (P2E) farm game, where players AKA farmers can harvest plants, collect resources and compete in different monthly events for rewards (wearables and emotes).

The team prioritizes the player’s experience in BPF, and we want to elevate the BPF experience further. Thus, we envisage the continuation of development in BPF, with many new and fresh mechanics that intertwine with existing features. Being a staple in Decentraland (DCL), BPF had more than 30000 unique visitors in the last 90 days and an average of more than 4000 weekly sessions for the last 8 months, and we strive to attract more visitors into DCL and represent DCL on an international scale.

Grant size

120,000 USD

Project duration

6 months

Beneficiary address

0x017fBaDCA2Dbc267Bb046624F23831662A6Fd718

Email address

butterflyprawnfarm@gmail.com

Description

The Butterfly Prawn Farm (BPF) is a F2P, P2E farm game that aims to create an easy-to-play Metaverse game in Decentraland (DCL) for the whole community. BPF’s goal is to continuously boost and engage the community in DCL. With a delivered Minimum Viable Product (MVP), BPF aims to push the boundaries, building onto fresh and advanced features, catering to farmers (aka players) with months of mileage. Similarly, BPF continues to attract new farmers through the next phase of development (details in the Dropbox link).

This baseline game product currently allows the farmers to harvest crops, catch farm animals, perform crafting, ascend the Magic Beanstalk, and scout the Cloud Castle. Being one of the top P2E games in DCL, BPF also offers multiple activities and monthly events with wearable/emote rewards. Furthermore, BPF has also been known to be setting standards on compliance, and introducing new and innovative wearable/emote utilities in DCL.

Currently, with high traction, the game quickly propelled seasoned/advanced farmers toward the end of the game. As a result, the team seeks to adhere to the level of dedication and motivation to continue developing advanced features for seasoned farmers. The team is also planning to develop new features to engage new farmers and provide seasoned farmers with more activities within the farm. With the drive to further BPF’s cause to the community and DCL, the team would like to seek funding from the community in this expansion plan. The team also strongly believes that the funding and support will value-add, boost, retain, and engage the community.

The team consists of 7 team members with a vast set of skills and experience. Our collaborative experiences include full-stack (frontend & backend) software development and deployment, product management, 2D/3D product design, and operations support.

Experience aside, we are a group of game enthusiasts. Passionate and inspired by the Metaverse, we have been actively developing and deploying new features in BPF frequently while tapping into our expertise. We always aim to serve and attract the DCL community better, through one-of-a-kind events, gameplay, and wearables!

Our team believes in delivering only the best for DCL community. As we tap into our expertise, the team applies agile development (SCRUM), where we have meetings (daily stand-up and fortnightly sprints) to be kept abreast of development progress, design updates, ideation, and retrospectives.

Collaboration:
Apart from developing BPF, the team believes in doing what is best for the DCL community as well. Because of this, we actively foster collaboration and compliance. Below is a list of projects/community we collaborated and engaged in during the last grant.

  1. Curation station library
  2. Meta GamiMall
  3. Meta Residence Tower
  4. Decentraland Blog Post, written by Yurius, the product manager
  5. Project management monthly meeting with video demonstration and metrics to the Grant Support Squad for compliance
  6. Monthly reports for compliance

Dropbox Link: Dropbox - Error - Simplify your life

Roadmap and milestones

Previous funds:
The team developed the baseline for BPF, as explained in the Description. The team also launched 23 wearables and 3 emotes with a variety of utilities. There were also many concepts BPF tried which were not provisioned for in the previous proposal. Some examples are vehicles in the farm, BPFrost, and Wanderer Shop Exchange which was the fan favorite. These new concepts brought variety to the BPF for farmers to truly enjoy the game.

Receiving funds:
Refer to the specifications for an in-depth breakdown

Phase 1:

  1. Cloud Castle Expansion
  2. New plots with new utility
  3. Plot logic and new materials
  4. Harvest and fertilizer logic

Phase 2:

  1. Animal farm (Rearing of farm animals with produce)
  2. Development of animals (Design/logic)
  3. Purchases and frontend design/logic
  4. Backend design/logic
  5. Produce and expiry logic
  6. Passive effects

Ongoing development throughout 6 months:

  1. Marketplace trading
  2. New Vehicle Concept
  3. Weather
  4. Overall gameplay and server improvements
  5. New wearables
  6. Monthly events and rewards
  7. Technical debts and bug fixes
  8. Cybersecurity improvements

The team is accountable to the community. There will be monthly updates via social media platforms and active engagement with the community. Suggestions, bug reporting, and discussions are taken seriously and the team looks to implement practical and favorable ideas.

Vote on this proposal on the Decentraland DAO

View this proposal on Snapshot

2

Hi everyone, time flies and Butterfly Prawn Farm had been around in DCL for 9 months! During this time, the game has grown into one of the consistently top feature (by visitorship) in DCL! The farm have also expanded 50% of its size to support its ever-growing features and events since its launch!

We had also organized many events (Halloween, Xmas, etc) with each one designed to be unique and cater to varying player groups. We are touched that the events are well-received! We also introduced many new features and concepts (cloud area, vehicles, emote use) which are to be further exploited for even richer gaming experiences. Our game concepts are often inspired by you, our players, with the game masters listening in on the discussions and feedback in our own discord channels.

We have been planning way ahead of what had been developed, including events and future features (e.g. the castle interiors, new animal rearing features and a marketplace for goods exchange). As per other games in DCL, a lot of effort and resources will be need to put in for game design, coding, security, servers, art design, user experience and operations. As the game is still in its infancy, alot of key features will still be needed to be developed to provide a complete core for gaming experience.

BPF is also trying to move towards its eventual sustainability after the completion of its core features in the upcoming phase of our plans, utilizing sales and royalties of our products and other potential collaborations in the DCL ecosystem.

Thus, we would like to appeal to our players to support us in our latest fund request to further improve and develop BPF into an even greater attraction in DCL! Thank you all for the support so far!

3

I voted yes because I - like many hundreds of other players - spend several hours there every day and have known the project very well since the beginning and therefore also support it.

The gameplay is simple but good, attracts many players, even new ones, is well designed, there are constantly new events and ideas and everything runs technically very well. The team is well positioned, committed, capable and also responds to feedback from the players. They have also released a lot of quality wearables which feature ingame bonuses, which also look good outside the game. You also see them everywhere in DCL.

BP Farming Game is one of the few already working and established game projects in DCL everybody should know, and that’s why we should support as it creates value for DCL and is a good reason to come back every day. Whether it’s because it’s fun or to see what new features or events there are.

4

Bring and hold users? Yes
Easy and Fun? Yes
Team technical ability? Yes
Overall, Yeees!

5

Already received 120k and no plan for sustainability, voting no

1 Like
6

DCL doesn’t have nearly enough DAU for anyone to have a “sustainable” game. I don’t think that is a good reason not to fund the development of content.

BP Farms has proven itself to be successful with the existing userbase and is in as good a position of any game to capitalize on future DAU.

7

I didn’t ask for it to be sustainable, only to have a plan to be, right now there is nothing, no plan to monetize, how are they going to make money in the future? Just keep asking 120k every 6 months?

1 Like
8

Thanks for the comments! To reply @HPrivakos and everyone who is concerned about sustainability,

We understand the need for sustainability. The plan is not to request for 120k every 6 months. But rather, the fund money is put into developing core features which could entertain, bring in traffic and to retain players in BPF and DCL. The current state of the farm is already capable of entertaining players for several months while they progress up to complete the entire game, unlocking all features (~6 months). We are working further to extend the core features to provide even more permutations and possibility of play, retaining players for even longer periods of time.

We are preparing for the future where the sustainability parts comes along. In the future phase, core development will be kept minimal since core features would have been completed, thus drastically reducing costs.

We had not been aggressively selling Pay-to-Win wearables (strategies embarked by other games, more mythics, more overpowering bonuses) but extrapolating from the sales of the few optional wearables we had put up, it is highly possible to sustain in the future when all core features are up (lower devt costs). On the aspect of game design, entirely Pay-to-Win is not going to keep players from staying in DCL or the game. Thus, we would rather go on a more conservative approach and make sure the wearables are well balanced while rewarding those who support the game. The aim is to also retain those who brings in traffic and social interaction (albeit less monetary).

It is a chicken and egg problem with DCL, where the success of in world content brings traffic to DCL, while the success of DCL brings success to its content providers. In the current state of DCL, it is not possible to sustain a full team of developers and designers to produce more core features at an accelerated rate, thus submitting this funding request.

Below is our plan for sustainability beyond the core development:

  1. Selling of more wearables and emotes on DCL Marketplace (many items are withheld to in game only at this point of time). We had been conservative on what is sold and what is ‘earned’ in the game. However, we have started experimenting on selling wearables for sustainability. Current sales amount to more than 7.5k MANA. With a more aggressive shift to wearables sales, we believe it would have been good enough to fund normal operations (events, server costs, wearable designs). We will also keep in mind that bonuses provided by wearables and emotes needs to be well balanced in order to attract players who are intending to earn from BPF.

  2. Launch of rarer/ supply controlled wearables (higher bonuses to game) - more mythic tier wearables commanding higher selling prices (strategy embarked by other games)

  3. Purchase of in-game currency in BPF Marketplace (in MANA) - in conjunction with in-game Trading, where players will be able to buy BP Coins (in-game currency) to purchase in-game commodities from other players

  4. Collaboration - working with other artists, dcl content providers to share costs on designs, curator fees, advertising

9

Will you be asking for additional grants in the future?

10

@Canessa It is expected that this funding will be sufficient for the core development of the project, which is the most costly part in terms of development.

Sustainability plans will kick in after this, there are no real plans to keep asking recurring funds (we understand the need for DCL treasury to be kept afloat), only possibility will be way smaller amounts to fund festivals/ events after the funds ran out.

11

Hi @butterflyprawn. I agree with the general sentiment here that games should always look to be self sustaining and I have seen your comment clarifying that which is good.

I would also prefer that you include 3 parts in your proposal next round.

  1. Recognition(in-world) of the DAO providing funding towards your project.
  2. Reducing grant amount over the next semi annual renewal to show that there’s some form of sustainability
  3. Providing some form of returns to the DAO, for example, a certain % of sales goes towards the DAO. Doesn’t have to be a cutthroat amount, ballpark could be in the 10%ish range.
12

Butterfly Prawn Farm (BPF) Development and Expansion

This proposal is now in status: REJECTED.

Voting Results:

  • Yes 67% 5,115,491 VP (139 votes)
  • No 19% 1,491,015 VP (23 votes)
  • Abstain 14% 1,140,785 VP (39 votes)