Youāre welcome, of course. Thank you for the question and feedback!
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 arenāt 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, Iād 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.
Iām 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 otherās impact with onchain attestations during friendly competitions. So far weāve 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 Fractalās 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 weāve greatly refined every aspect of the game since then.
Two years ago I started a community called Eden Fractal, where weāve 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 itās 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 itās 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, Iād 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 canāt allocate the amount of funding that weāre 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 itās approval. In that case Iād 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, Iām 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 āstrike 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. Iām curious to hear thoughts from the community and welcome any feedback. Thank you for reading.