Final update for PlayMini 
Hey there — excited to share our final update with the OP / Hedgey community.
Background
About me
- My name is Phil ‘PJ’ Murphy, I was designing, coding, and telling stories about games & crypto products for the past 10 years. Most notably I led product at SuperRare as a Dir of Product, led web3 experiments at Medal (3M MAU), founded my own interactive livestreaming company FrameNinja (we built shows on Twitch), and helped to design products from 0-1 at a handful of stealth startups.
What is PlayMini and why I’m building it
- PlayMini is a platform with simple skill-based social games where players compete in tournaments with shared prize pools (1v1 and Group Elimination).
- We believe that there is an opportunity to create an experience between simple social games (e.g., quiz, reaction time button clicker, wordle, minesweeper, etc) and financial components that make it more thrilling (tournaments with shared prize pools, wagers, item trading).
- I was dreaming of building it for a few years now, and I think it’s perfect timing in terms of opportunity, market, and needs. Here are 3 reasons why:
- I built multiple interactive liveshows on Twitch in the past with over 50,000 unique viewers/players and learned first hand that people love to participate in social games even if they need to spend money to play. As long as it’s fun and you can hang with other players, this experience is so novel to many people that it makes people stay (retention went up 2x), pay (revenue went up over 60%) and come back (at least 1/3 of players returned).
- The reason people love social games is that we’re inherently lonely. Over 61% of adults in the US said that in recent polls, and simple social games is one of the best solutions as it allows you to meet new people, bond with friends, and create memories.
- The reason it wasn’t built before at the worldwide scale is because it’s hard to integrate financial components using traditional financial systems. Without crypto, it’s virtually impossible to connect people between different parts of the world (arguably the biggest use case for web3). But crypto wasn’t efficient, cheap, and accessible enough until recently → so now that infra is there and consumers more educated, it’s a perfect time to create a social experience with the crypto in the back.
- Extra point: I WANT TO PLAY IT MYSELF!!!
Last month update
Product Today. What we did?
- Juggling between this and other projects, we knew we only had time to create a simple prototype that would show type of games and experiences we’d like to build should we have more time & resources, as well as put together a plan for the next few months.
- We built a simple quiz game in <1 week with crypto-related packs, leaderboard, and NFT rewards on Base.
Watch our Pitch + Demo:
What we learned?
- Multiplayer is always better than singleplayer. Our current demo and initial plan was designed around single player experience with a global leaderboard. But we quickly learned that the most fun playing those games comes from either 1v1 or full lobby games with handful of players → so now we’re focusing on designing a new version.
- It takes more time to do game design than to code it. From now on we take a more creative approach with testing gameplay ideas first, and then moving to full-fledged implementation.
How has the idea evolved?
- 4 weeks ago, we started this program with only one thesis in our head: “Simple social mini games with real money rewards” and nothing else.
- Since then we turned it into a full-fledged platform concept with multiple social multiplayer game ideas and unique powerful financial components no one is utilizing today. Designed + implemented MVP and started designing v2.
- Now we believe we’re onto something big and we’ll make this platform a reality whatever it takes
Plans on distribution / current traction
- Since we haven’t launched the game publicly yet, we wanted to focus on our distribution plan down the road. At the of the day distribution is key.
- We want to target a crypto community first as we learned many people enjoy social experiments and games in general. So we started building out our community on Twitter (with upcoming Farcaster hub too) using our existing network, as well as meeting our future players on GDC 2024 in person & building out our waitlist + getting early feedback on gameplay.
Is it OP native and will continue to be?
- We’re building many financial components on OP/Base as we believe this is the only reason our project could exist today.
- OP stack gives us much more efficient transactions both speed and cost wise. And since we’re aiming at making people transact on a frequent basis (nature of the game), Optimism/Base is the only brand that people trust today, and the only tech that we found to be efficient to work with.
Big vision
What PlayMini will become?
- Long-term, we want to become a social game hub where people from all over the world come to make memories together. We want to help people stop feeling lonely and give something fun and entertaining (social gaming is the cure!!!).
- Short-term, but as a next step, we want to build a platform with a few games that would let people play 1v1 and participate in weekly tournaments with shared prize pools.
- We’re inspired by the overwhelming success of existing social games such as Chess. com, GeoGuessr, and most recently Crypto: The Game. We believe that we’re entering a new era of social games and we want to be the biggest player in this market.
How will we use the funding?
Our main goals for next 3 months are:
- Redesign + Release the first public version (add 1v1 mode with a new game, tournament system, and improve reward system)
- Leverage coming user feedback to find our “secret sauce”
- Continue fundraising process so we can scale up operations
To be able to complete this plan, we’ll use funds from this program across a few areas:
- Expand the development team. We want to get a few killer engineers/designers on board who can help us deliver the product we want.
- Server + DevOps cost. We’re building multiplayer based game with many blockchain components, so it requires intensive testing and resources.
- Operations + Legal. As any projects, we’d have to deal with some operational and legal cost to ensure we’re providing the best experience.
Helpful links
Website + Socials
- twitter. com/playmini_
- playmini. co
Past updates