Arbitrum DAO Grants Domain Allocator Nominations

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Questbook Gaming Domain Grant Program Report

Brief Domain Description

The Gaming Domain is focused on the broad web3 Gaming ecosystem on Arbitrum. With a heavy slant towards Indie Games, this domain is looking to fund games and projects that can bring both maximum short and long-term impact to this nascent industry. Additionally, discoverability and resources for developers and founders have been taken into account. Overall, the focus of this domain rests on filling an underserved niche for indie developers and studios building novel and promising projects in the web3 gaming space.

Short Term Expectations

Short term impact for gaming grants should be adequately contextualized with a few facts from the web2 indie game development space.

  • Average time to develop an indie game: ~1 to 3 Years
  • Average funds needed: $50,000 - $10,000,000
  • ‘Success’ rate of indie game studios: 7% generate enough revenue to create a second game

With these statistics in mind, showing short term impact in the gaming vertical will be tough, though not impossible. As the domain allocator i’ve focused on games with working demos, or alphas, in an effort to show maximum impact within a 6 month period, ushering these games towards some aspect of launch before the end of March. This leads me to…

Long Term Expectations

My personal hope for this grant program has been to engender an innovative and inclusive culture of indie gaming on Arbitrum to put our best foot forward while onboarding the next decade of Arbitrum Gaming developers and studios.

The developers and studios building in this space today can serve as a vanguard for the nascent web3 gaming industry, proving out concepts and experimenting with new technology. While not every grantee in this program will see success, the overall impact will be a net positive for the Arbitrum gaming space as well as the Arbitrum DAO and should return many multiples on the ARB invested on a long enough timeframe.

Domain Overview

  • 49 Total Proposals
  • 16 Proposals Accepted
  • $248,700 Allocated so far
  • 43 Total Milestones among all projects
  • 16 Milestones completed
  • $73,900 Disbursed so far

Proposals Accepted

  1. Chess Fish
  • Blockchain-verified onchain Chess infrastructure.
  • $13,500 Allocated
  • 3 Milestones - Chess on the blockchain with Chess.fish
  • $9,000 disbursed
  • A verifiable onchain infrastructure for Chess built on top of Arbitrum is a strong representation of a non-ponzi use case for blockchain in gaming. With recent distress in the competitive chess scene around cheating and exploits, this is a solution to a real-world problem.
  1. Smithonia
  • A captivating and immersive high-fantasy MMORPG with MOBA combat.
  • $25,000 Allocated
  • 3 Milestones - Smithonia - MMORPG
  • $17,500 disbursed
  • With a strong, existing core community, a high-quality pixel art aesthetic, and a large team behind the project, Smithonia is well suited for making a splash in the Arbitrum gaming ecosystem. UA impact from the core gameplay loop of the 3v3 MOBA should be readily visible upon launch.
  1. Gold Inc.
  • A mobile resource mining and management game built by Sapphire Studios.
  • $25,000 Allocated
  • 3 Milestones - Gold Inc. Mobile MMORTS
  • $7,500 disbursed
  • Gold Inc. is a forward thinking mobile-first game built by a studio with previous mobile game success. The addition of blockchain elements built on top of Arbitrum situate Gold Inc. in a good position to grow the pie of gaming with novel monetization methods. The expansion from Polygon to Arbitrum should hopefully bring new users from outside the ecosystem to Arbitrum.
  1. Frags
  • A Xonotic mod purpose-built for FPS tournaments on Arbitrum-themed maps.
  • $5,000 Allocated
  • 2 Milestones - FPS: "Frags"
  • $4,000 disbursed
  • Modding communities are a strong fit for blockchain enabled games and the communities that they attract. Arbitrum-specific gameplay elements should bring a new type of competition to the ecosystem, and ideally other modders with experience in Xonotic as well.
  1. Kaiju Cards
  • A roguelite deckbuilder with mechanics drawn from squad RPGs and character collector games.
  • $22,500 Allocated
  • 2 Milestones - Kaiju Cards - RPG, character collector, and roguelite deckbuilder in one
  • $7,500 disbursed
  • Kaiju Cards is a shining example of an indie game that has found early success in the Web3 gaming market. It’s re-playability and focus on depth of gameplay combined with it’s strong IP and quick development speed make it a great fit for this program. Arbitrum as the base layer for all of it’s on-chain economy components is an easy choice. I expect high impact alongside their future launches.
  1. Gaming Chronicles
  • A gaming community focused on web3 gaming with +1,500 members on discord and +8,000 subscribers on substack.
  • $3,300 Allocated
  • 1 Milestone - Gaming Chronicles
  • $3,300 disbursed
  • More distribution and UA channels need to be set in place for gaming on Arbitrum. Led by Raiden, a familiar face in the broader Web3 gaming ecosystem, this community will do a lot to drive new users to Arbitrum games. I expect quick turnaround impact here, with much room for growth to larger grants focused in similar areas.

  1. Spire
  • Onchain lore for ecosystems, with two innovative mechanics already live, competitive minting, and toggle governance.
  • $17,500 Allocated
  • 3 Milestones - Spire: On-chain Lore for the Web3 Gaming Era
  • $3,500 disbursed
  • An innovative approach to onchain IP, Spire is a thought-experiment uniquely made possible by blockchain. Such a novel project is great for showcasing the type of building that happens on Arbitrum, forward thinking and decentralized. Impact will be determined by levels of engagement within the projects they partner with.

  1. Ether Source
  • A classic crafting & gathering action RPG reimagined in a mobile-first idle format.
  • $24,000 Allocated
  • 3 Milestones - ҽ𝐒: 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐥-𝐓𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐈𝐝𝐥𝐞 𝐌𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐏𝐆
  • $7,500 disbursed
  • A unique take on the Idle gaming genre with a web2 first mentality as opposed to the many web3 native idle games seems high risk yet high reward. Games such as Melvor Idle have strong player bases and a game like Ether Source could look to form a strong core community with which to build out their larger vision. The earliest-stage game funded through the program, yet the one with the quickest GTM based on the limited amount of development needed for their MVP.
  1. Land, Labor and Capital (LLC)
  • An onchain tycoon game where players are in true control of their economy and their creativity.
  • $18,000
  • 3 Milestones - Land, Labor and Capitol (LLC) - onchain tycoon game
  • $6,000 disbursed
  • LLC’s novel approach to onchain games through the use of AI generated assets, combined with their close partnership with Leonardo AI helps them stand out from the crowd. Economy-centric onchain gaming is a strong niche to explore in Web3 as it caters to the current hardcore crowd of existing Web3 gamers. Finally, the teams strong background in both game development and crypto protocols places them at an important intersection to drive the success of their project.
  1. Gaming Startup Collective
  • Event sponsorship for a burgeoning community of Web3 gaming Founders.
  • $6,900 allocated
  • 3 Milestones - Sponsorship of the Gaming Startup Collective's Monthly Calendar of Events
  • $4,600 disbursed
  • As a community full of active and ambitious developers and founders in web3 gaming, GSC is a strong cornerstone for onboarding and growing gaming development talent in the Arbitrum ecosystem. By sponsoring events, creating specific channels for the Questbook gaming grant domain, and spreading the word through social media channels, GSC has helped to shine light on this grant program and the wider gaming ecosystem on Arbitrum.
  1. Chaquer- Fully On-Chain RTS Game
  • A fully on-chain real-time strategy game inspired by the Age of Empires series
  • $12,000 Allocated
  • 3 Milestones - Chaquer- Fully On-Chain RTS Game
  • $4,000 disbursed
  • Resource management games are a strong fit for fully onchain games. The space is still nascent but experimentation here should be concentrated on Arbitrum, enabling the ecosystem to make a name for itself on Arbitrum, therefore attracting more FOCG developers to Arbitrum in the future.
  1. Waypoint Gaming - Game Night Grant
  • An emerging game discovery community dedicated to creating a welcoming and enjoyable environment for gamers to explore new Web3 games.
  • $3,500 Funding Allocated
  • 1 Milestone - Waypoint Gaming - Game Night Grant
  • $3,500 disbursed
  • More game discoverability is always a need within gaming ecosystems, especially for the burgeoning Arbitrum Gaming eco. Gaming communities and guilds like Spike’s Waypoint Gaming offer a unique opportunity to go to the heart of where Web3 gamers reside to onboard them directly. This should be seen as a quick impact, temperature taking exercise in which we can evaluate the results in order to allocate more capital to these sorts of communities in return for their assistance in User Acquisition.
  1. DATA2073
  • An online, turn-based collectible card game for two players set in a post-apocalyptic AI-driven world.
  • $20,000 Allocated
  • 4 Milestones - DATA2073
  • $0 disbursed
  • A shining example of the CCG genre, DATA2073 late stage development process will be able to make a strong impact during its alpha launch. As an experienced game development studio, OSTEN Games has a deep relationship with the game development and venture studio funding communities in Brazil. A successful launch of DATA2073 could help usher in a new cohort of eager and talented game developers from these communities.
  1. Gaming Solution with Prizes
  • A gaming solution where players can play a variety of games they are familiar with from web 2 but and win web3 prizes.
  • $22,500 Allocated
  • 3 Milestones - Gaming Solution with Prizes
  • $0 disbursed
  • Games as a Service, Puzzled seeks to implement fun web2 games in a white glove manner for a myriad of protocols and projects on Arbitrum. As gamification eats the world, this sort of offering should help with both new user acquisition and sticky retention for protocols that choose to work with Puzzled.

  1. Fair Gaming ecosystem
  • A P2P decentralized 2d shooter with high-stakes wagers.
  • $15,000 Allocated
  • 4 Milestones - Fair Gaming ecosystem
  • $0 disbursed
  • A gaming platform focused on the degen side of gambling and wagering mechanics, Fair Protocol seems like a solid fit for the current Web3 gaming audience. Fair Protocol aims to develop a more robust core PvP game that serves as a base layer for wagers made in cryptocurrency. This sort of setup can only be done transparently with blockchain and therefore is a good use case for this grant.
  1. WorldWarDAO : On-Chain Idle-RPG Game.
  • An onchain Idle RPG focused on innovative onchain mechanics and a unique meme-based take on the genre.
  • $15,000 Allocated
  • 3 Milestones - WorldWarDAO : On-Chain Idle-RPG Game.
  • $5,000 disbursed
  • Onchain gaming has a lot of room for growth, especially in the Arbitrum ecosystem. By funding onchain games in different genres we can look for early success that will lead to more development in this nascent industry flowing to Arbitrum. World War DAO’s meme take on the genre should attract an initial user base, which is one of the largest hurdles in gaming.
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