[Mission Request] Develop Onchain Social Games that Attract Builders to Optimism

Delegate Mission Request Summary: Develop engaging onchain social games that attract and nurture builders, fostering a vibrant community of developers who build valuable applications on Optimism.

S6 Intent : Intent 3A: Grow Application Developers on the Superchain

Proposing Delegate/Citizen: Dan Singjoy

Total grant amount: 250k OP

Should this Mission be fulfilled by one or multiple applicants: Multiple

How will this Mission Request help accomplish the above Intent?

The mission request to develop onchain games will help accomplish the Intent to grow application developers on the Superchain in several key ways:

  1. Engagement and Attraction: Onchain games are interactive and engaging, providing a fun and compelling way to attract new developers. By offering gamified experiences, builders are more likely to explore and become interested in the Optimism ecosystem.

  2. Skill Development: These games can be designed to incorporate educational elements that teach developers about the Optimism platform, its capabilities, and best practices for building on it. This hands-on learning approach helps developers gain the necessary skills and knowledge.

  3. Community Building: Onchain games foster a sense of community by encouraging collaboration and competition among developers. This helps build a supportive network of builders who can share ideas, solve problems together, and contribute to the ecosystemā€™s growth.

  4. Showcasing Potential: Successful onchain games can serve as showcases for what can be achieved on the Optimism platform, inspiring developers to build their own projects. Seeing the creative and technical possibilities can motivate more developers to join and innovate within the ecosystem.

  5. Incentives and Rewards: Incorporating incentives and rewards within the games can further motivate developers. These incentives can be in the form of tokens, recognition, or other benefits that encourage ongoing participation and contribution to the Optimism ecosystem.

By leveraging these aspects, the mission request to develop onchain games aligns with the goal of growing the number of application developers on the Superchain, ultimately contributing to a more robust and innovative development community.

What is required to execute this Mission Request?

Execution Requirements for the Mission Request:

  • Game Design and Development: Develop engaging onchain games that incorporate educational elements about Optimism.

  • Integration with Optimism Ecosystem: Ensure seamless integration of the games on Optimism, utilizing the unique features and capabilities of the OP Stack.

  • Incentives and Rewards: Design and implement incentive structures to motivate participation and ongoing engagement from developers.

  • Community Engagement and Outreach: Actively invite builders to participate in the games, leveraging marketing and outreach strategies to gain sufficient distribution and network effect.

  • Documentation and Tutorials: Provide clear documentation and tutorials to help developers understand and participate in the games.

  • Impact Assessment: Regularly assess the impact of the games on developer engagement and the overall growth of the Optimism ecosystem, making adjustments as needed to maximize positive outcomes.

These responsibilities and deliverables are essential for successfully attracting and growing application developers on the Superchain through onchain games.

How should governance participants measure impact upon completion of this Mission?

Milestones:

Governance participants can measure impact using these milestones:

  1. Milestone 1: Mission Definition and Planning (Month 1)

    • Finalize mission definition, detailed planning, and preparation for clear objectives and timelines.
  2. Milestone 2: Initial Gameplay (Month 3)

    • Develop and deploy onchain games, initiate community outreach, and invite builders to participate.
  3. Milestone 3: Mid-term Review (Month 6)

    • Conduct a review of progress, including engagement levels, community feedback, and initial impact on developer growth.
  4. Milestone 4: Yearly Review (Month 12)

    • Conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the missionā€™s impact on developer growth and community engagement.

These milestones provide a clear, structured approach for governance participants to measure progress and impact throughout the missionā€™s execution.

Metrics:

  1. Developer Engagement: Number of new developers, participation frequency, and retention rates with the gameā€™s contracts.

  2. Onchain Transactions: Total and volume of transactions and unique wallet interactions with the gameā€™s contracts.

  3. Community Participation: Increase in community size, , showing lasting success in development.

  4. Project Development: Number and diversity of new projects, and their onchain activity, demonstrating tangible outcomes like successful RetroPGF and mission applications.

  5. Network Outreach: Reach, social media engagement, website traffic, and new sign-ups, measuring visibility and audience growth.

  6. Incentive Distribution: Amount and distribution of rewards, and their impact on participation, assessing incentive effectiveness.

Impact:

  1. Developer Onboarding and Retention: Number of new and active developers, indicating sustained growth.

  2. Ecosystem Activity: Increase in onchain transactions and unique wallet interactions, reflecting network usage.

  3. Community Engagement: Growth in community size, RetroPGF participation, and Mission completion from participating developers.

  4. Educational Advancement: Improvements in developer skills and knowledge to ensure educational growth.

  5. Outreach Effectiveness: Reach, social media engagement, website traffic, and new user sign-ups to the game.

Has anyone other than the proposer contributed to this Mission Request?

While originally conceiving the Mission Request, I spoke with several community members at Optimism Fractal events who helped provide some inspiration for the idea. For example, you can see a conversation that I had with Abraham Becker about a related mission request in this video.

Additional Information

Eligibility for Game Developers

Game developers must meet specific criteria, including:

  • Proven track record in developing games, preferably in Web3
  • Strong technical understanding of the Superchain and OP Stack
  • Commitment to Optimismā€™s values and collaborative development towards the Optimistic Vision

Funding Allocation

  • OP tokens for game developers are locked for one year (in a similar way to prior builder grants)
  • OP tokens may be distributed to players as participation incentives (in a similar way to prior growth experiment grants)
5 Likes

As a member of the grants council we would like to sponsor this mission request to move it to Token House vote.

We messaged @Gonna.eth and he mentioned we should ask you to change the [Sponsorship Request] to [Mission Request].

Thanks!

3 Likes

Hi @DanSingjoy thanks you for putting this together

I have a couple questions. and suggestions for modifications:

  1. Is the idea here to have developers build on-chain social games specifically for other developers to play and join a community of current developers building on-chain games?

  2. As this is experimental in nature I would suggest limiting risk by lowering the total grant size to something like 75,000 OP. If the idea proves to be solid then we can expand upon this idea and up the grant size during the next season

1 Like

Hi PGov, thank you very much for sponsoring this mission request. I just changed the name to include [Mission Request] as requested. I really appreciate your support and am looking forward to the next steps!

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I wanted to suggest some modifications to the Mission Request and work with you guys (@DanSingjoy @PGov) on it but because we are running low on time to post suggested Mission Requests (due today), I made make some minor modifications and posted to the forum as well. Hopefully in the next couple of days during the ranking hopefully we can collaborate to modify it into one mission request (totally fine happy with @PGov being the ultimate proposer). I would like to see this proposal pass but I think it has a higher likelihood of passing if the grant size is smaller.

My modifications:

  1. The amount of OP (250k ā€”> 75k)
  2. Updated the first milestone to require the deployment of 1 onchain game

Here is the Mission Request with my suggested changes

1 Like

Hey @Jrocki,

Thank you for the thoughtful questions, feedback, and modified proposal. I really appreciate it and would be happy to collaborate with you and @PGov to make modifications on these Mission Requests over the next couple days. Iā€™ll respond to your questions and share more thoughts about this as soon as possible.

1 Like

Youā€™re welcome, of course. Thank you for the question and feedback!

  1. That is partially correct. The idea is to develop onchain social games that developers play together, fostering a supportive environment where builders can learn, network, and collaborate in friendly competitions. This Mission Request will make it easier for developers to join a community of current developers building onchain games, but developers could also play onchain social games with other developer communities that build different kinds of apps as well.

  2. I understand the rationale for limiting risk and the Mission Request could work with a lower budget, but I highly recommend maintaining the original budget to maximize benefits for the Collective. Here are some reasons:

General Rationale

  • Onchain social games have proven success: For example, Upland and Alien Worlds have built vibrant economies that have attracted hundreds of builders over the past few years. Other examples include Crypto the Game (which was recently acquired by Uniswap) and build.top (which has fostered an active community of Base builders on Farcaster). There are hundreds of other games on chains like Redstone and Immutable that have raised substantial funding and gained significant traction in the market.

  • The gaming industry is growing rapidly: With around 3 billion people globally identifying as gamers, the gaming industry is generating yearly revenues of ~280 billion dollars and expanding with an annual compound growth rate of 8%. A similar exponential growth trajectory is happening in onchain games and blockchains offer immense benefits to improve games, as you can see in a comprehensive resource that I created about GameFi a couple years ago.

  • Onchain social games are perfect for developer onboarding: This type of game offers engaging, immersive, and fun experiences with other developers, making them an ideal entry point for developers on Optimism. As shown in Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World, playful experiences have been the main drivers of innovation throughout the history of civilization. Similarly, onchain social games are well-positioned to be the main attractors for builders on the OP Mainnet.

  • Providing funding for both builders and players: This Mission Request aims to both support developers who build onchain social games and provide incentives for those who play them. Approving the original budget would provide developers more resources to commit to game development, bootstrap a larger network effect of players, and create a virtuous cycle where developers who play the games earn more funding to build innovative applications on Optimism.

  • Providing opportunities for multiple teams: The application is open to multiple applicants and the originally requested amount could fund several teams to develop onchain social games. Reducing the budget by 70% might only support a small team or a few individuals, limiting the ability to fully develop these games and attract builders to the Superchain. More funding empowers more developers to create a much bigger impact.

  • The loose scope can support a variety of games: This Mission Request is designed to support developers building and participating in a wide variety of onchain social games. If a developer is building a game that has some onchain element and a social aspect that attracts builders to the Superchain, there is an opportunity for them to apply for this Mission.

  • Budgetary comparisons and considerations: I looked at the total budget of Mission Requests that were sponsored and it appears to be lower than the 6 million OP allocated to the Intent 3A for this season. As I understand the Grants Council could always choose to return the unused portion of the budget to the governance fund if there arenā€™t enough high quality applications to justify using the full budget.

Perspective from a Prospective Applicant

In addition to the general rationale for the larger budget above, Iā€™d also like to provide insights as a prospective applicant for this Mission Request and provide more context to convey the benefits of a larger budget.

Iā€™m planning to request at least 100k OP to support the development of the Respect Game and reward builders that play this onchain social game at Optimism Fractal events. The Optimism Fractal community hosts weekly events where builders play the Respect Game to meet collaborators, promote their work, and evaluate each otherā€™s impact with onchain attestations during friendly competitions. So far weā€™ve hosted 33 events where over forty builders have made hundreds of onchain attestations with our Respect Game app. All events are recorded and produced with show notes for educational purposes, as you can watch here.

Optimism Fractal is the culmination of years of development by hundreds of builders working to create a better society with onchain social games. You can explore Optimism Fractalā€™s rich history to learn why the Respect Game has such immense potential to create profound benefits for all. The core gameplay mechanism in the Respect Game was created by a visionary innovator who architected the first decentralized exchange, first onchain social network, and largest ICO of all time (which collectively had a market cap of over 22 billion dollars). Over 1.5 million dollars has been distributed via an earlier version of this onchain social game since in 2021 and weā€™ve greatly refined every aspect of the game since then.

Two years ago I started a community called Eden Fractal, where weā€™ve hosted over 100 weekly events and more than 80 builders have participated in meetings based around the Respect Game. You can also more experiments based around the Respect Game in this playlist which shows an average of 30 builders playing the Respect Game at thirty additional events and explore dozens of other communities that have also embraced this onchain social game. You could say that the Respect Game is experimental compared to some legacy Web2 apps or older Web3 projects, but itā€™s quite mature as a result of 3+ years of development and is more than ready to deserve a much larger amount of funding than the budget of this Mission Request.

Participants at Optimism Fractal consistently provide overwhelmingly positive feedback and there is a huge amount of demand from communities that want to implement the Respect Game. Optimism Fractal developers are now nearly finished with the next generation app, which will make it much easier to play the Respect Game and enable powerful new features, including the ability for EVM accounts to be democratically governed by players who have earned Respect. However, despite the immense potential and appreciation for the Respect Game, the Optimism Fractal community has received a sparse amount of funding and has mostly persevered on the basis of volunteer efforts. There is a limited window of time to develop the Respect Game and itā€™s crucial to seize the opportunity to support the development of Optimism Fractal in order to maximize benefit for the Optimism Collective.

The Respect Game at Optimism Fractal provides a perfect environment for onboarding, supporting, and fairly distributing funding to builders on the Superchain. This is evident in the elegant design of the game mechanics and is empirically supported by our extensive experiences so far. Additional funding for the Optimism Fractal community would provide developers with much needed resources to make further enhancements to the new software, bootstrap a network effect with thousands of builders joining the weekly events, and allow us to allocate funding for incentivizing other communities or organizations who attract developers to Optimism by integrating our open-source tools for the Respect Game. With adequate funding we can ensure higher quality development, better outreach, and more impactful events to provide greater benefits to the Collective.

The ROI for the Collective is extremely high on this Mission Request and I believe that no other Mission Request would create so much value in proportion to the amount of funding. If it would be helpful to increase the likelihood of approval from the Token House, Iā€™d be happy to campaign with the Optimism Fractal community and reach out to delegates to garner support for this Mission Request. If the Grants Council or Token House decide they canā€™t allocate the amount of funding that weā€™re seeking for Optimism Fractal, then of course the Mission Request with a lower budget is much better than nothing being approved and I fully support itā€™s approval. In that case Iā€™d likely reach out to the Partner Fund or another organization to request additional funding (and as I understand one of the goals of the Grants Council is to reduce the amount of applicants who reach out to the Partner Fund). If it is possible, Iā€™m confident that it would be best to approve the originally proposed budget in this Mission Request to attract developers to Optimism and actualize the Optimistic Vision for all.

Conclusion

I urge the Grants Council and Delegates to approve this Mission Request with the 250k budget as originally requested to support the development of the Respect Game, Optimism Fractal, and all of the developers who are building other onchain social games or may benefit by playing social games on Optimism. Sufficient funding is crucial to maximize impact with onchain social games and a larger budget will benefit the Collective far more than a limited initial approach. We must ā€˜strike when the iron is hotā€™ in order to actualize the Optimistic Vision and now is the time to support onchain social games as much as possible.

Updates

The second version of this Mission Request that Jrocki created was approved with a budget of 75k after discussions with Grants Councillors. In Cycle 26 I created a Mission Proposal called Optimism Fractal Respect Game for this Mission Request and re-proposed a third version of this Mission Request with a 250k budget. You can explore these links for more information and further discussions related to this Mission Request.

Please feel free to reach out with any questions or comments. Iā€™m curious to hear thoughts from the community and welcome any feedback. Thank you for reading.

2 Likes

After reviewing the mission proposal, we find it to be an innovative and potentially impactful approach to growing the developer community on Optimism. The concept of using onchain social games to attract, educate, and retain builders is new and intriguing, yet likely to be highly efficient in driving ecosystem growth by activating, engaging and retaining users + developer talent.

The particularly appealing aspect of this mission is the gamification of user and developer onboarding. Based on empirical data (outlined here + our internal), the gamification approach undoubtedly leads to greater user activity, retention and engagement. Utilizing this apporach hence has the potential to make the learning process more engaging and interactive, which could significantly boost both interest and retention among users, builders and developers.

By incorporating educational elements into enjoyable experiences, the mission could create novel, fun yet effective pathways for users, developers and builders to more deeply familiarize themselves and engage with the Optimism ecosystem.

2 Likes

Hi Deelabs, thank you very much for your support and thoughtful perspectives. You make excellent points and I completely agree. I also enjoyed exploring your website and am looking forward to learning more about your work on the Superchain.

I just added an updates section to the bottom of my post above, which links to the newest version of this Mission Request which is currently under review in this cycle. I also just published another detailed post in the comment section, which provides more details about the budget and rationale about this Mission Request.

I would greatly appreciate your continued support to help this Mission Request gain the support that it deserves.