[DAO: QmabBJU] Expanding and improving WonderZone (resubmission)

Governance
1

by 0xfe91c0c482e09600f2d1dbca10fd705bc6de60bc (Yemel#60bc)

Should the following Tier 6: up to $240,000 USD, 6 months vesting (1 month cliff) grant in the Gaming category be approved?

Abstract

(This proposal has been resubmitted using the new VP thresholds and voting period. Originally posted by Joe)

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 is often the most popular location in Decentraland, with over 10,000 daily users in recent days.

We want to improve WonderMine and the other games in the WonderZone Amusement Park, making WonderZone and Decentraland the go-to places for play-to-earn metaverse games.

Link to WonderMine: WonderMine Crafting Game - Decentraland

Grant size

240,000 USD

Beneficiary address

0xfcacAcE2713D41c02666E2643E5583793196c935

Description

When creating WonderMine, our initial goal was to give players a fun reason to log in to Decentraland every day. We started with simple game mechanics, resources, and crafting rules so people can immediately start playing without a steep learning curve. We also wanted it to be a social hub for Decentraland players.

We are proud of what we have built so far, and the great player community that has formed around the game. But improving the game has taken longer than we wanted. We owe it to the players to add game play features and offer more craftable wearables and NFTs. As a part-time team we haven’t had the time or funding to fully dedicate ourselves to WonderZone.

Specification

Acquiring funding through the DAO would let us dedicate more time to development, and hire an additional developer to help us improve WonderMine and other games in WonderZone park. Here is what we plan on expanding and improving:

Server improvements To make the crafting experience and the overall gameplay experience more smooth, we’ll bring on a server-side developer to help us build a more solid server infrastructure. This is a high priority because we’ve had server performance issues during previous events, with a sudden influx of new players. It’s vital to ensure scalability as our games become popular.

WonderZone NFTs Many of our players have been waiting anxiously for WonderZone NFTs, Diamond tipped Pickaxe, WonderGem Pickaxe and NFT fishing poles eventually. We will fast track the development of our proprietary NFTs once we acquire the necessary funding.

Shared meteors and meteor tiers Currently in WonderMine, players can’t see the meteors that other players are mining. Shared meteors will be an additional class of meteor that can be seen by everyone in the scene. This will introduce some interesting competition and collaboration into the game. The shared meteors will be more rare and valuable in general, and require more than one person to mine them. These rare meteors might drop all over the park, so a valuable meteor could drop in a distant place in the park, and you will have to gather people from the mining field to help you mine it, and you will all share the rewards!

Kingfisher social fishing game Some of you know that we already ran 2 beta tests of our newest game “Kingfisher”, which is a social fishing game. Kingfisher will be integrated into the WonderZone crafting economy. The materials you fish will be used in combination with WonderMine materials to craft wearables in the future. Some of the funding will go towards bug fixing and improving it so we can finally release it in 2022!

Kingfisher playthrough by Peanutbutta: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tj436P3ohCU

Personnel

The team

  • Rob Dixon (Radix), Co-founder, lead developer
  • Chestnutbruze, Co-founder, 3D artist
  • Lew Co-founder, 3D artist
  • maruudn, Community manager
  • Maricela Perdomo (Maricela), 3D artist

Roadmap and milestones

2022 Q1

  • Server improvements
  • WonderZone NFTs
  • Shared meteors
  • New wearables
  • Aesthetic improvement of in-game assets
  • In-game highscore leaderboards with monthly rewards/tournaments

2022 Q2

  • Release Kingfisher, a new social fishing game
  • More meteor tiers, rarer meteors with more valuable materials
  • Wearables Shop and Ticket System
  • In-game Pets
  • More wearables
  • Expand WonderMine to other scenes across Decentraland
  • Restructuring of the park

Vote on this proposal on the Decentraland DAO

View this proposal on Snapshot

1 Like
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WonderZone is where many people experience DCL for the first time; discovery, interaction, human connections. It’s important to innovate it to continue the exploration and delight. I personally consider it a centerpiece within the DCL community! I enjoyed reading your thoughtful proposal and look forward to seeing the developments in the future! All my best!

2 Likes
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Know whats sad. Thousands of players who spent hundreds of mana, who play everyday have no vote power to support stuff like this. Thats a fn fatal flaw of this DAO. It needs to be fixed. With my 500 Vp you get a yes from me. P2E is the future. Mining meteors with the bros sounds fun. As does solo play. Not just that but a fishing game too. With the poor mechanics of Ethermon. DCL needs to expand its P2E. This is the way.

2 Likes
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Appreciate the support! We agree, and the proposal will go a long way to improving that first impression people get of dcl! :pray:

1 Like
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Thanks for the support :+1: we know most of the community does not have so much VP, but voicing your support matters too! And if mining meteors with the bros sounds fun, then you’re gonna love all the stuff that’s gonna happen if this passes

1 Like
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You got my vote! For newer players, Decentraland IS WonderZone. When you hop on for the first time, chances are that you’ll start your adventure in the mines for the grind. Every day I get asked what is the point in mining these rocks. This will give new life to WonderZone and a stronger purpose than just wearables if you lucky…I recently obtained my name and I’ll gladly use my VP on this!

1 Like
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The real first place most of us start to discover DCL. There are things to improve (better communication with the community), but you have my support and my vote, as well. Hope enjoying all those new features very soon!

2 Likes
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I’m not too sure about this proposal. From the outside looking in, it looks like y’all built a game, the object of which is to chase meteors and gather materials, ultimately to get a “free” wearable. In my experience, y’all haven’t really kept your side of the bargain that, for us spending our time and energy populating Decentraland and doing this mining task, you provide wearables for us to work towards.

By comparison, ICE poker has released 4 wearable collections since the end of October. I know it’s a diff team and situation, and their mint also had issues, but they be trying.

Since you haven’t kept your side of the bargain, it seems … audacious to ask for a $240k grant from the foundation to do what you already promised and didn’t do. Also, that is a lot of money, and from what I could tell from the proposal, it’s not known specifically how it will be spent. Are you paying developers, like yourselves, to make the suggested improvements? Are you paying salaries for makers for the wearables? Maybe it’s not a requirement of the proposal, but seeing the numbers and allocations might make this more concrete.

There is a proposal on the table to open the production of the wearables to the community. That seems like a great alternative to the foundation handing you that large sum. A lot of talent out here, and it would open more to involvement and greater participation. Maybe I’m an outlier, but I don’t want sharable meteors - is this something you came up with in convo with users, or is it an internal idea about how to create more interactivity between players? Me, I’d like to be able to get the wearables for the meteors I’ve already mined.
Finally, I believe the foundation should support initiatives that move Decentraland forward. There are so many other things that are worthy of these resources, given that this already exists and already has an audience (by default, since not much else to do here yet), I would like the current team to deliver on this version before making use of community resources.

P.S. I tried engaging with you in discord and was banned. I apologize if I became salty. I do believe your proposal will pass and hope you will keep in mind my feedback as you move forward.

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I am voting yes for this and encourage others to do so as well.
My understanding is that the purpose of these larger grants were to get the work of proven teams into Decentraland, to accelerate quality content and user engagement.
Rob’s experience with game company leadership before Wonderzone, as well has his having built the highest traffic site in Decentraland, well qualifies him and his team to request a grant to accelerate and further improve the user experience in this inworld game.
I tip my hat to what they have already accomplished.
There is a struggle many of us have in making the transition from doing this parttime and essentially volunteer to fulltime. I can think of no more deserving team than one that is out front as a strong, proven leader in Decentraland.

2 Likes
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Hey @feedback , just to address your last point and get it out of the way. You weren’t banned in discord you were muted temporarily, and if you had taken the tone you have now I assure you that you wouldn’t have been muted. So appreciate you changing your approach :+1:

The grant money will go towards some of us being able to work full time on wonderzone, the rest being able to spend more time developing for wonderzone. And lastly to hire additional developers where we need it. And they will spend their time on the tasks outlined in the proposal.

I don’t expect you to know this, but Decentral games (Ice poker) got funding early on, which is precisely why they were able to develop into what they are now (which i commend them for). But it goes to show that funding is important, developers can’t run on pure passion. It seems like you expect us to first make the game, and then once the game is completed we get the grant as some sort of rewards for completing it. The grant is there to allow developers to actually dedicate more time to developing stuff in decentraland. And imo an already proven popular experience with a team that has been developing part time for 1 year+ now seems like the perfect candidates for such a grant. We’ve been upfront all the way with our community that this is not a full time project for any of us, it’s something we have been doing on the side and finding time for it has been difficult because we have other obligations.

1 Like
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Thanks for your response. I’m sure everyone can read, think, and vote accordingly. I am still muted, but that is okay by me. Be well.

1 Like
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Expanding and improving WonderZone (resubmission)

This proposal is now in status: PASSED.

Voting Results:

  • Yes 99% 13,317,254 VP (233 votes)
  • No 1% 7,103 VP (4 votes)
1 Like
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Expanding and improving WonderZone (resubmission)

This proposal has been ENACTED by a DAO Committee Member (0xfe91c0c482e09600f2d1dbca10fd705bc6de60bc)

Vesting Contract

Funding Transaction

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Is there any why that Alt accounts can also be blocked in the Game, too? Example if a user is in the game under one account, then they can’t also used a second account to play in the game at the same time. The shared meteoroids idea might exacerbate the use of alt accounts to mine that rare meteoroid. Blocking might work by detecting two or more accounts under the same IP/MAC at the same time, might also help to cross check across all realms and islands too.

Users with Alt accounts drain the available supply on in game prizes and then flood the marketplace quickly driving prices down. It also skews the real user stats. Above you say “with over 10,000 daily users in recent days” but in reality probably more like 1000 or less unique users.

Here is one example. User with 8 alt accounts transferring all prizes to one account. And not once purchase any of those big nose wearables as verified in the sales records.
wallet 0xd4dfB0C9F80A228034f84f86c06340BAa9ED3D99

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