I recall that back in Mar you were to vote ABSTAIN. So, something very important to you must have caused you to switch to AGAINST. Gaming is important to me, and as you and I had previously exchanged thoughts on this program, I wanted to expand on some of those discussions because, sadly, most people appear to have moved on or they don’t feel that anything further needs to be added.
You cited “meaningful changes to address the concerns” but I fear that’s a bit too ambiguous; especially in light of the [valid] concerns that you previously articulated, and which, to me at least, aren’t that easily addressed or reconciled.
e.g.
This - I thought - was impractical because the scope of the GCP eclipses anything that Questbook could feasibly morph into. That aside from the fact that the Questbook grants program, to put it bluntly, is completely inadequate. To the extent that the $25K-$50K grant requiring oversight by two allocators who may or may not have the experience to adequately vet gaming projects, means that the issue isn’t just about extending the Questbook amounts, but also a complete overhaul of the program - including replacing the current domain allocators. As someone who has spent a lifetime in this one field, I can tell you that this description of the gaming program is wholly devoid of anything that would remotely pass for due diligence smell test in a game pitch.
And so, extending the Questbook gaming program would require a completely new program, while possibly retiring the pre-existing one as-is.
I want to also add that if you take a look at the current grant requests, it’s easy to see that those applicants coming to the GCP would present a huge barrier of entry and too much friction that comes with the due diligence befitting an ask via the GCP.
In short, another Questbook proposal will just end up being a version of GCP anyway. Aside from the fact that the pre-existing Questbook doesn’t actually have the stringent controls that GCP has.
Agreed. And these were already addressed in some fashion here in the discussions as well as in the proposal updates.
Fact is that, budgets aren’t a guarantee of anything. You could have a $1M budget or a $265M budget and still yield the same net results. The only difference is that a larger budget allows larger and better curation of games and game devs, which in turn enable the spreading of risk over time.
While Arbitrum has lagged behind other chains in terms of gaming, I believe that, at the very least, if done correctly, GCP will curate enough quality games so that a few of them break out. If you look at how game publishing portals such as Steam, EGS, GoG, GMG got started, it’s easy to see how they grew over the years. Now, they’re all platforms that host/sell games of all types, even if only a few of them are successful enough to recoup costs. In the short-term, gaming on ARB is going to continue to flounder because making quality games takes a long time and costs a lot.
And ofc, we have ApeChain - built on Arbitrum - coming online this Summer; and they too are looking to curate games as a primary funnel. To me, that’s another fly in the [ARB gaming] ointment, and I remain puzzled as to why the foundation decided to fund that, rather than put those funds towards a gaming on ARB initiative. The end result is that we’re going to end up with Treasure, XAI, ApeChain, all of which, though built on ARB, just lead to fragmentation of the gaming on ARB ecosystem. But maybe that’s just me looking at it the wrong way.
All of this is true - and most of us have harped on these points. However, tbf, that’s why @Djinn increased the time span from 2 to 3 years; which in turn, increased the costs.
As to games coming online within 12-18 months, the reality is that most quality games befitting funding from GCP, likely already have their chain/investor partners lined up. And so, it’s going to be games currently in dev or entering dev for the 25-28 that will be looking for funding.
But the reality of that too is the other chains aren’t sleeping just because there’s a $265M gaming fund floating around. In the end, the GCP may not even be able to curate any games any time soon. Especially since, in my estimation, with all the voting, hiring, entity setups, ops etc that need to be done, it’s likely to take a good 6+ months before everything is in place for the GCP to start curating games. Which means we probably won’t hear about any GCP funded games before H1/25.
Agreed. And there’s not getting around this salient point. We all know that Web3 gamers don’t play games for the fun factor. They play them if they can make money from them. If a game is fun, then it’s just a bonus. But once the ability to make money ends up being a lot of work than they are willing to put in, they tend to go grind in the next best thing. There are literally no games in Web3 that you can’t already find in trad gaming - and better. Not a single one. And so, that means if you’re making a game for Web3, you need both the fun as well as the money funnel to keep players engaged.
This isn’t a problem for the GCP to solve. It’s there to curate games that have the appearance of longevity. It’s why I believe that the GCP should focus on investments instead of grants because the former has a better chance of yielding tangible financial results.
That’s all that I have to say. I don’t profess to have all the answers, but as a legacy gamer and game dev who wants to see gaming thrive everywhere, I am just doing my best to get people to keep their eyes on the prize rather than on the nuances involved in the possibilities of failure.
