Michigan Blockchain believes that focusing on gaming through the GCP is a strategic move for the following reasons:
Market Potential: right now, Arbitrum isn’t seen as a gaming chain and we believe that there is significant potential for user adoption and engagement. By trying to position Arbitrum as a leading platform for gaming, the network can attract both gamers and developers
Ecosystem Diversification: By supporting gaming apps, Arbitrum can reduce its over-reliance on DeFi and attract a broader community of users.
Community Building: Gaming is unique in the way it fosters strong communities and repetitive/continuous engagement. These factors are invaluable in the network-centric Arbitrum ecosystem, contributing to its long term sustainability.
Giving money to startups isn’t the only option, though. As I understand the proposal, any team can decide to apply for a grant regardless of what stage their project is in. Then it’s up to the Catalyst Team to accept it or not.
And in the above, whether it’s indie, AA or AAA doesn’t matter because whatever team(s) decide to apply for a grant, they can present their game pitch. Also, your exact query is why I had constructed my suggestions the way I did over here in the education thread, and which took into account games of different stages.
As to "use existing and successful games to implement them into web3" that’s easier said than done. If a game is already pre-existing and successful, why would it want to migrate over to ARB from wherever they are currently deployed?
I will give you an example.
Remember that MMORPG game which I had bought, and foolishly tried to run through my ApeCoin DAO in order to get those guys on board with gaming, and which I referenced over here in the education thread?
That’s a $26MM (base game, improvements, two expansion packs etc) MMO game since it was first developed some years back (btw Everquest just turned 25 yrs old). A 100% completed Web2 game with almost 400K unique accounts, large community, on Steam etc. when it was running.
Implementing Web3 features (blockchain, wallet, tokenomics etc) and 100% visual reskin, has been in dev since 2022 when I created a startup for that Web3 project. That entire exercise - start to finish - is over $3MM+ for which the visual improvements alone are about 75% of the costs.
That game’s closest competitors (Domi, Avalon, MIR4, Mirandus, WorldShards, and possible Nine Chronicles) aren’t even close in terms of gameplay, feature set etc. And some of these are still many years away from release. You know the main thing about those RPG games? They’re all on different chains. NONE of them are on ARB.
I haven’t taken any funding from chains because, metrics aside, money won’t get you an “organic Web3 community”. In the case of my MMORPG game which I am talking about, most especially as the game is likely to lose a large portion of its Web2 install base due to gaming’s general resistance to Web3 games, there has to be a good reason to migrate over to ARB. And the cautionary tale is that when you’ve front-loaded all the risk, you get to call the shots. That’s different from a team with a smaller game looking for funds to complete the game; or a team looking for funds to start a game.
Now for my point.
A lot of people don’t really understand how much games cost to make, how long they take - and the inherent risks of that investment. I have dedicated over 40 yrs of my life to this industry and there is absolutely nothing about gaming or game dev that I am not familiar with. To me, Web3 gaming will continue to decline because [Web3] gamers are treating gaming the say way that they treat the next cash-grab airdrop; in that they want it now, they want to fill bags - and nobody really cares about the game.
Most people in this thread don’t even realize that by the time GCP is even up and running, and even finds the first good game to fund, won’t happen until YE24. And depending on the viability of the game, more likely nothing will deploy on ARB before H2/25.
And so, setting GCP aside for a moment, the reason nobody much cares about gaming on ARB isn’t because of the community (most of them are parked on Treasure - and for good reason), it’s because there hasn’t been a reason to come here for that. A dev like me - and others like me - have zero interest in micro-grants (sub $50K) when we’re talking about millions and larger games by experienced teams.
Right now, I see votes of 45MM ARB in favor of @Djinn GCP. The numbers don’t lie, the interest is there. But that’s just one iota of the battle ahead. Any decent game - such as mine - that’s currently on track to deploy within the next 12 months isn’t going to wait around for the GCP to get formed, get up and running, put up grant apps, wait for submissions, run through them, approve them, fund them etc. That’s a long - long - process akin to a standard game funding/distribution/publishing process. So, those games would already have their deployment track ready and rolling, including maybe taking funding from the chains they are going on etc. and so, they can’t exactly migrate even if they wanted to.
For a game - of any kind - of good quality and gameplay mechanics (including good tokenomics) to deploy on ARB - assuming they don’t go on Treasure which already has a large built-in gaming community - by YE24, needs to already be in the process and ready to deploy right now.
As I said before, I don’t have any immediate plans to deploy either of my two Web3 games on ARB because, [eager + excited] community aside, migration has associated planning, costs, refactoring etc. That’s going to be the same boat that any game that’s ready to deploy within 12-18 months is going to be in. Guaranteed. And those teams absolutely do not have the time to be messing around with DAO grants and the like because they already know the associated risks as well as the ramifications of running through a DAO gauntlet, wasting all that time, effort, and energy only to probably see it ultimately fail because at the end of the day, no matter how much the community likes the game, it’s up to the voting wallets to make the financial decision.
I wish things were different, but this is the warning that I was giving over in the education thread that what GCP is building is basically a full-blown op that’s not going to be as fast as most would like; and is likely to fund games the community likes and those it doesn’t like because that decision is down to the Catalyst group because it’s faster, more efficient - and is basically how it’s done in the industry whereby it’s just a handful of people at an investor/publisher/distributor group who get to green light games.
ps. Any ARB whale who understands all of this and is interested in talking to me (or my friends) about our games for deployment on ARB, feel free to msg me on Telegram (thedereksmart).
Really appreciate your insights here. Considering the challenges you’ve outlined, do you believe there is a realistic path forward for the Arbitrum community to foster a thriving gaming ecosystem in the near to medium term with an alternative to the current GCP?
As a broad response to the entire proposal, the elephant in the room has to be that this is a relatively large ask - 5.67% of the entire treasury and nearly double what we’ve already spent thus far. For a period of 2 years. That’s not to say I’m immediately opposed to the idea, but with that kind of ask should come a lot of scrutiny.
I read through the gaming educational post and providing that is appreciated. As I must admit I’m having a ‘head in the sand’ moment with the gaming space. I was surprised to see such a robust community tbh, and it’s put into perspective the fund ask. I’ll also acknowledge to those who may have missed it since there are a lot of replies — a great post by @karelvuong above. It brought a lot of good insight and suggestions to this conversation. Of which I’ll highlight the budget discussion. I don’t want to quote block half the post so just read it, but I’ll say I think the proposed changes should be taken into consideration. Especially a few items we learned from the STIPP/LTIPP
Arbitrary division of capital based on over/under 500k grants I’m a little torn. I do like the thought in practice to make sure ‘little guys’ have funding, but it creates a situation where one group might be fully funded before the other. And it seems silly to stop funding one group even though funds are available (and arguably that is an indicator they need more funding!) I also think Questbook fills the ‘small developer’ niche already.
All that said about over/under 500k, I think the better solution is a cap on each proposal. This was a huge problem IMO with the STIPP round 1 - a few large projects sucked up a big percentage of the total grant amount.
Spreading out spend I think is important too. Not only do I think we need to limit spend amounts so there is an even distribution over the window, I also would feel more comfortable if this was a greater then 2 year project.
As a general concept, I really like the idea of finding ways to get profits back into the gaming ecosystem so it is self-sustaining. The spend is a lot easier to swallow if it’s an expected one time, and not something that is being asked for again come 2026.
Is there a more detailed breakdown of why there is 2.250M ARB ask for legal costs?
Can we also get more details on the “Fund Manager / Venture Lead” role, as they are getting possibly 2m ARB tokens a year.
(Note: I’m not just dismissing this cost outright, but it seems like a big ask at face value so wanted to be more understanding of what this is and what I may be missing)
Apologies if I just missed it, but all the informational material gives a good sense of scope and scale of gaming in the space… but are there metrics on actual revenues of this space? i.e., what makes gaming specifically worth chasing after a piece of this pie with 5% of DAO Treasury funds?
And aligned with that, I saw where other projects have started their gaming ecosystem funding in 2022 - what have you seen with those projects as presumably they are well into their funding at this point? Just high level thoughts.
As for a vote, still deciding at the moment. It’s been made clear the gaming is a huge space and Arbitrum is falling behind, I’m also worried though we too far behind the curve at this point (it looks like a lot of other chains pushed hard in 2022 and are really well aligned for this resurgence of the market). So while the spend is large I’m seeing the reason why, given we are behind and probably need to spend a little more to catch up.
Thanks! Always happy to share knowledge and experience - even if they don’t always paint a rosy picture.
To answer your question, there’s nothing “short-term” about gaming. Even if a completed game was to deploy on ARB today, there’s nothing to guarantee its success other than the game itself and the community around it.
Also bear in mind that unlike trad gaming, Web3 gaming is a completely different paradigm shift and one that gravitates more towards making money and filling bags than about playing a game. That’s just the sad reality of it. Earlier this year, I wrote an article about this salient issue. And it’s why, after the farmers have farmed the token, tanked the economy, then left the game, if the game doesn’t or can’t stand on its own, it will eventually die.
While I am not yet very familiar with the ARB gaming ecosystem, outside of Treasure that is, I don’t think that the community should look from within to promote gaming adoption. As I have written before, in gaming you can’t grow a bubble from within. Think about this. Say the ARB community is 10K (DAU) gamers strong, and they fund the game to the tune of $10K per day, $300K per month. Is that enough to sustain the game devs to keep the game going? That depends on the game. Live service games such as MMOs cost a fortune (trust me on this) to maintain. Even if there’s no additional work remaining, you need to not only be on top of cheaters, scammers, abuse, bugs (no game is perfect and you would be surprised the kind of bugs that can crop once your game makes contact with gamers) etc. 24-7. And not only that, you need community management people as well as support staff.
What all this says is that the ability for a game to thrive here - or anywhere - depends on not just the pre-existing community, but also on how it attracts gamers outside the community, how the game is attractive to both parties etc. If gamers outside the community come here to play ARB games and the community isn’t welcoming, unless the game can stand on its own, they will leave. And in some cases, even if the games don’t hold their attention, it is the community itself - and how it treats new people - that will determine how it grows and how they impact games.
While the likes of WAX, IMX, AVAX et al all have large gaming communities and lots of games, most of those games, like those on Treasure, aren’t being played for whatever reason. In fact, the last time I looked at the analysis from Naavik and others, most of those games are neither growing nor making money. So, the number of games on a platform isn’t a metric of how well they are doing, let alone how the community reacts to them. As I have written before, again, it’s the same problem with Steam, EGS and other platforms which, even with massive install bases in the millions, most of the games on them do not grow and thus don’t make money.
You know why games like EQ, WoW, Runescape et al are still being played and literally printing money every month? The community which grew with them over the years. They are fun games, word gets around, people join, frens made etc. Web3 doesn’t have that - and I very much doubt that it ever will because the current crop of games put priority in making money, not making a fun game that can cultivate gamers.
I am notable for my penchant for clarity and honesty, so, let me share something with you.
My MMORPG game which I am bringing to Web3 (IMX/AVAX) wasn’t exactly lighting up the charts when it was live. It didn’t have millions of gamers and it certainly wasn’t making millions of Dollars per month. But, as a good (it wasn’t great, and most games aren’t that anyway), well designed, indie game with low maintenance costs, a passionate and engaged community, no grind type gameplay, the community more than paid for the game. And it kept growing. And so, I bought it from the investors because I figured that like its competitors, whether I later sold it or not, it would be around for another 10+ years even if we only extended it with expansion packs (of which we’ve since done two, now integrated into the main game itself), improved on the visuals - just like its competitors which did the same over the years. The community kept it going - and only because the game was engaging enough for them to do that, and to stick around. The pleasantly surprising aspect of that is when it got on Steam back in 2015, and we had to use the SteamWorks api for new user sign-ups, those accounts quickly surpassed the legacy accounts (which could still login to the game even on Steam because we had support for Steam and legacy login) from our website. And even with that [user] fragmentation, the end result was a cohesive community whereby even those who didn’t actually like the game for whatever reason, still stuck around. I would know this because we can see their unflattering comments and their account play data.
And so, it’s not just about what a community can do for a game - it’s a two-way street. There’s no benefit to a community embracing a bad game just because they want to support it. That actually never - ever - works out well in gaming. Ever. And this is part of why, in my foray into this GCP discussion, I have always provided insight and caution as to the expectations from the community. Just because there’s $400MM to deploy for gaming doesn’t make one bit of difference if the games aren’t engaging enough for the community. And so, when outsiders hear about those games, then come here to engage and play them, only to find that they’re not up to par, the end result just ends up with the community bubble not growing. Does the community want $400MM worth of games that even they, let alone outsiders, want to play?
The flipside of that is, when devs decide which chain to deploy their games on, a lot comes into play. Most of which is about money, how to make it, and how quickly to do so. You can easily tell this if you spend more time reading the game’s tokenomics paper if public, or just by playing it. And so, a game being deployed to small community relies, on that community and outside farmers, to spark the money train. And that is how they fail.
Like I once tried with my Ape community who are deeply unserious about games not Yuga branded or the like, I would love to one day deploy a game to an engaging Web3 community, if only to help it grow as symbiotic relationships tend to co-exist. But it’s just a different type of engagement metrics. e.g. when you make an RPG game, you’re catering to fans of those types of games. When you make an FPS game, similar dynamics. But when you make a Web3 game - of any kind or genre - the odds are stacked because not only do you now have to cater to a horde that cares more about making money than about the enjoyment of a game, you also don’t know what genre is even attractive to that community. And may the farce be with you if you try to deploy a Web3 FPS game into a Web3 community that mostly enjoys RPG games.
In closing, while I do believe that there’s a realistic path forward for the ARB community, I would urge you the vocal gamers in the community, to come to grips with the fact that $400MM isn’t going to guarantee anything. Not in the long term, and certainly not in the short term. And my guess is that more than one game signed by the Catalyst Group is likely to create a stir in the community who may not even like the game, let alone the spend to get it. And that’s going to be as distracting as ever. Just like most everything in gaming. All you can hope for is that the Catalyst group hired by the Council, come up with criteria for the types and genres of games curated and funded in order to build an eclectic catalog of games. And even so, that’s not a guarantee of anything because a game is only successful if people are actually playing because it’s fun and not because they can fill and grow their [token] bags. If you can still play a game even if it doesn’t have an associated token or that whole P2E thing, then you already have the answer as to what type of game is going to be successful for the community. Pick your poison.
Very good points above btw. Not sure if you noticed them, but I previously made most of those points as well so that the community would have a better insight as to what this play is and what’s at stake in both the short and long term.
While Arbitrum has already fallen behind, when we look at gaming, they are always long-term plays. There’s nothing short-term about it. And so, even though ARB has some catching up to do, I personally believe that it’s in a unique position to capture the better crop of upcoming games, instead of having to curate from the pre-existing churn pool of games - most of which are likely to underform anyway. In the coming months, the new crop of Web3 games will have learned all what not do, as evidenced by the landscape of underperforming games parked on other chains. And so, my bet is that, as long as the Catalyst Group (which doesn’t actually need to be a group of C Suite experts) is capable of curating and funding decent and engaging games which not only put the gaming first - and not just the game token, all will be OK.
In fact, and this is probably going to be rather unpopular, but I’m just going to say it. It would be of tremendous benefit to the ecosystem and community if the prerequisite for getting a GCP grant means that you cannot deploy a game token - of any kind. At least not without some restrictions. Instead, the game would use a game’s internal economy to create a points reward system - just like MMO and similar games. And then tie that to $ARB. Not only does this create an initiative to build an engaging game, it also - to some extent - discourages farmers, while boosting the token itself. Usually, rolling game tokens is a means to raise funds from the community, investors etc. The Catalyst group should get rid of that. Sure, it would mean certain games won’t come here, but so what?
This is the part where the community then gets to decide if they want enjoyable games or if they want games that they can make money from - even if they are otherwise enjoyable games.
@Bob-Rossi - Even if Arbitrum is behind in gaming. There is one ecosystem that has been working since 2021, on Arbitrum, Treasure, led by a team that wants to make a strong impact. Next 6 months is going to change everything for Treasure and by extension, Arbitrum.
At least 3 games, that have been in development for 2 years are going to get released this year.
I firmly believe this will bring immense attention to Arbitrum and could benefit everyone, including DeFi.
I just hope that when the momentum kicks in, everyone on Arbitrum comes together to push the narrative. All is not lost.
In fact, and this is probably going to be rather unpopular, but I’m just going to say it. It would be of tremendous benefit to the ecosystem and community if the prerequisite for getting a GCP grant means that you cannot deploy a game token - of any kind. At least not without some restrictions. Instead, the game would use a game’s internal economy to create a points reward system - just like MMO and similar games. And then tie that to $ARB. Not only does this create an initiative to build an engaging game, it also - to some extent - discourages farmers, while boosting the token itself. Usually, rolling game tokens is a means to raise funds from the community, investors etc.
This does indirectly hit at one of the fears with a program like this… are we going to end up funding a true gaming ecosystem or are we going to be providing a temporary capital boost to a bunch of Gacha ‘games’ that will jump ship 2 years from now when funds dry up? Because I’m not going to pretend to know the viability of not having a game token / NFT to the game, but you make a fair point about what some of these games really are.
Indeed. But here’s the thing, Web3 games need tokens for only 2 plausible and specific reasons. This being a well-informed Web3 community, I need not go into all the details, but I mention this only to illustrate my pov:
Funding. This can be from community or investors; and usually come with lockup periods etc.
Rewards. To the community for playing the game, and which they can then use in-game to buy or do stuff.
Depending on the stage at which a game requires funding, imo, it would be prudent for the GCP to put in safeguards to ensure that it’s not just providing funding to a team that just needs liquidity other than what is needed to bring their game to ARB and to make it a success. As you said, once the liquidity dries up, those games will just get abandoned. The Web3 gaming landscape is littered with games like that, as you already know.
That said, we can’t penalize a team for wanting to issue a token in order to raise additional funds for their game. But, like all investment deals, that team has to make a choice on what route they want to take. Take me for example, while my games are typically expensive - with the upcoming Web3 MMORPG being the single most expensive one for me, and by a wide margin - I have no reason to deploy a token other than as reward system for gamers. Issuing tokens for raising money basically provides additional funding for incidentals (e.g. marketing, server deployment, team growth etc). MMO games have traditionally had built-in economies in which their currency have no value outside of the game’s ecosystem. In Web3, this presents an incredible opportunity for both the devs and the gamers if the tokenomics are done correctly.
Jan over at Outlier Ventures wrote a good article last year about the pros and cons of doing a token. And Yosh over at Revelator, and who designs tokenomics, also had a really article about that particular subject as well.
Even if $ARB is required to be used, the game can still issue a game-specific token but which is only used in the game as a utility. e.g. in my MMORPG game, you get free tokens for completing quests, finding secret stuff, engagement etc. And you can use those tokens to buy stuff in the game. And not just stuff that you own, but also consumables.
By requiring games use $ARB, not only does it help combat inflation in the game, but it also completely removes the issue of teams abandoning the game after their game token tanks (for whatever reason). Again, this isn’t for all games because after all making games is a “for profit” enterprise and the goal is to make enough money to keep the game funded - especially if it’s a live game and not just a one-off game.
I also want to mention that with Treasure’s own $MAGIC token which has different utility and USDT paired, the concept of using a token native to a game’s ecosystem is a solid one. However, that is only successful if the games using the token are fun to play and have a decent economics/tokenomics model to begin with. Short of that, if the game isn’t successful in this regard, then the use of the token - even if it was unique to the game - is of no consequence.
That said, for a $400MM play, it’s essential that a cohesive gaming ecosystem (not just Treasure) be built for ARB. To me, there’s no reason to just do what others are doing when you have a war chest which can be put to so much better use than to just “fund games”. Something along the lines of Arbitrum Gaming System (AGS) which is a portal for all funded GCP games - similar to Steam, EGS etc. would be an exceptional coup in the space because it would be much more than just a portal of disconnected games. The ARB community could build that. It’s not rocket science. If the AF can give $3M to fund ApeChain - which the ApeCoin DAO could very well have funded themselves if they wanted to - I think that it can put up $2M to build AGS while the GCP is getting its act in gear to curate games. Something to think about as the community moves along this game-changing process.
Indeed. However, it’s important to note that this can’t be all on Treasure to carry. Not only is that a patently unfair proposition, risk mitigation aside, it’s also not in the spirit of decentralization. There needs to be other portals/publishers etc. parked on ARB and which also strive to do the same thing because the more the merrier.
Legal costs: It’s a high level estimate for a two year program that might require regular compliance review and bespoke contracts based on the deal structures. Could be less or even more depending on how we proceed and how the GCP team operates. We don’t want to run out of legal runway
Fund manager: The up to 2m ARB tokens is based on traditional venture models based on program success. We want to attract the best and brightest and would be competing with web3/2 venture teams for talent.
Revenue / Metrics: I think @karelvuong or @tloney would be best equipped to tackle this one
Other network learnings: We brought in several ex ecosystem folks like Jason Lee from Polygon for qualitative feedback and do have a host of perspectives - general consensus is that the last wave of gaming grants resulted in strong branding but not necessarily successful games YET. The model we are using for the GCP is inspired by some of the commercial share structures of a few gaming focused networks that have longer tail ROI expectations but I don’t think any data is available yet for those models.
Thank you for being active and willing to grow the gaming industry on the Arbitrum blockchain. However, I would like to point out some weak points in this proposal, perhaps you can give me a more detailed answer and explain in more detail
The main weaknesses in the sentence “Catalyze Gaming Ecosystem Growth on Arbitrum” are:
Lack of specificity: The sentence is quite general and doesn’t provide specific details about how to catalyze gaming ecosystem growth on Arbitrum.
Ambiguity: It’s not clear what aspects of the gaming ecosystem growth the author is focusing on or what strategies they are proposing.
Missing actionable steps: The sentence lacks actionable steps or solutions that can be implemented to achieve the stated goal.
No one is saying that it should all be on Treasure to carry. But one cannot deny the fact that Treasure has been the one building on Arbitrum since last 2 years and is now going to expand rapidly. They have realised potential of Arbitrum in late 2021/early 2022 and have been there since then. The fact of the matter is, they are ahead of any publisher who already is or going to join Arbitrum.
It’s good to give credit where credit is due and yes, I agree, more builders/publishers there are on Arbitrum, better it is.
I wasn’t implying that anyone was saying that it should be all on Treasure. The point that I was making there is actually just as you posited. That Treasure has been at the forefront of games on ARB. That’s why I have been saying that, while true, the burden shouldn’t be on them to carrying gaming on ARB. Aside from the fact that it’s not in the spirit of decentralization.
After carefully considering the Gaming Catalyst Program (GCP) proposal and the insights provided by OG in the gaming industry, such as @thedereksmart (thank you ser for following up on my prev comment), I have decided to vote “Abstain” on this proposal.
While I appreciate the Arbitrum community’s enthusiasm for fostering a thriving gaming ecosystem and recognize the potential value of dedicating significant resources to this effort, I believe there are several important concerns that need to be addressed before moving forward.
Firstly, as highlighted by many detailed comments above, the success of a gaming ecosystem depends on factors beyond just financial investment. Allocating a large budget, such as the proposed $400 million, does not guarantee the creation of games that will be embraced by the community or attract a sustainable player base. The intrinsic quality of the games, the engagement of the community, and the ability to attract players from outside the existing Arbitrum ecosystem are all critical factors that need to be considered.
Secondly, the timeline proposed in the GCP may not align with the realities of game development. As noted in the comment, the program may not be able to move quickly enough to attract games that are already in the pipeline for deployment within the next 12-18 months. This suggests that the impact of the program on the immediate gaming landscape within the Arbitrum ecosystem may be limited.
Furthermore, the comment raises valid concerns about the potential misalignment of incentives between the goals of the Web3 community and the realities of game development. The focus on financial incentives and “filling bags” in the Web3 gaming space may not be conducive to the creation of truly engaging and sustainable games.
Given these concerns, I believe that the Arbitrum community would benefit from further discussion and refinement of the proposal. By abstaining from the current proposal, we can signal our commitment to building a thriving gaming ecosystem while acknowledging the need for a more nuanced approach that takes into account the unique challenges and opportunities presented by the intersection of gaming and Web3.
I encourage the proponents of the GCP to engage more with the ARB community to refine the proposal and sets realistic expectations for the timeline and resources required to achieve these goals.
By taking the time to carefully consider and address these concerns, we can lay the foundation for a gaming ecosystem that is sustainable, rewarding, and truly reflective of the values and aspirations of the Arbitrum community.
Thank you Djinn for the reply, and expansion on the legal / fund manager costs. I’ll keep an eye out for the others responses.
Other network learnings: We brought in several ex ecosystem folks like Jason Lee from Polygon for qualitative feedback and do have a host of perspectives - general consensus is that the last wave of gaming grants resulted in strong branding but not necessarily successful games YET. The model we are using for the GCP is inspired by some of the commercial share structures of a few gaming focused networks that have longer tail ROI expectations but I don’t think any data is available yet for those models.
Got it, and makes sense. I am glad there has been research done into this pre-proposal. One of the silver linings here is that we can learn from the successes and failures of other projects. Hopefully this will be focused on and help Arbitrum catch up.
For now, I will be voting “Yes” in the snapshot proposal. I am still a little concerned at the size of the grant, but see enough positive things to warrant moving to the next step and see what is tweaked from feedback to the Tally stage. I’ll just echo what I noted above in terms of some of the specifics of the funding tweaked. With understanding that you can never find an allocaiton that makes everyone happy, I think there is some room for improvement.
I’ll also add, I’d personally feel a little more comfortable if there was some type of milestone structure or streamed funding mechanism. Versus just giving out the entire fund up front. That should help with two thing - making sure the ARB spend is spread out over the 2 years and give the DAO a mechanism to stop the project if it isn’t succeeding down the line. Apologies if this was already part of the plan and I missed it (a lot of posts in this thread!)
Thank you to everyone for the dedication and effort invested in the Gaming Catalyst Program (GCP) proposal. It’s impressive to see how the proposal has changed based on insights shared by the community.
We support this proposal, and wanted to underscore the crucial importance of efficiency in its execution. By efficiency, we mean the judicious use of the 200M Arb investment from the DAO, ensuring that every resource allocated to the GCP yields significant value. We are confident that, if executed effectively, this initiative will propel Arbitrum to the forefront of the web 3 gaming industry.
Here are some thoughts on behalf of the UADP (voted against the Snapshot):
Although we are generally in support of initiatives to further strengthen Arbitrum’s gaming ecosystem, we simply believe that the ask of nearly $400M here is exorbitant. One thing we’ve been thinking about is L2s having more of a concrete identity. Naturally, Arbitrum’s identity has become DeFi-biased. And although there are strong gaming initiatives that have sprouted out of Arb, like Treasure, we feel that doubling down on what we’re good at is what we should focus more attention on. That being said, we’re not in favor of eliminating gaming in its entirety. There should still be programs to support game devs and attract publishers–but to a smaller account. Game development is very much an all or nothing task. Either we go all in or keep it light.
Everyone saying these sorts of funding programs will seed the next AAA game are simply incorrect. The entire $400M budget would easily be spent curating a AAA game and would take numerous years. The goal of this proposal is to play catch up, it seems. Hence, the focus should be on a handful of strong indie games. This budget could address that market, but we still feel that a smaller budget can be more prudently allocated to serve that purpose. We would encourage this proposal to go forward with a much smaller ask and collaborate with the grant groups, like the gaming domain allocator, to come up with a way to grow gaming. That way, some data points are present to help guide the funding initiative.
A good idea may be to switch the framing of this program to an incubator/accelerator that is paid out in tranches. A big issue with this proposal is that longevity is not addressed. We need follow-on investments to support the groups who are the most promising, and the best way to do so is track and monitor continual performance relative to given KPIs. As soon as KPIs are met, those teams attain more funding. This would elongate the timeline here from 2 years to many more. It would also reduce the ask of $400M to something smaller due to the tranched setup. This way, we are thinking more long-term and in an organized manner. Currently, it seems things are being rushed, which sounds like a recipe for disaster.
The other aspect that we feel is unclear is how tangibly the reward will circle back to the DAO. There are two aspects this proposal can optimize for: increasing Arbitrum’s gaming presence and returning value to the DAO. Of course, both can theoretically be achieved, but there’s a very real likelihood that only one or none will be accomplished. If we are competing with groups like Immutable, who’ve spent the past several years throwing money at game studios, gaming partnerships, and tooling like their SDKs and custom APIs, it’s hard to justify spending this much capital to potentially see little return when a direct competitor is miles ahead and thinks about nothing else but gaming. What we could focus on instead is a chain agnostic approach, where the DAO truly runs a VC gaming arm for the sake of profit, and of course, has a bias towards developing on Arbitrum. That way, at least we can more reasonably forecast ROI.
Valid concerns there. However, I should point out that even $1B doesn’t guarantee anything. That’s the sad reality of the games dev business, unfortunately.
All the factors that you outline there, are all absolutely critical to the success of any game initiative. However, I should say that those metrics that you point out, are only available after the fact. In other words, you won’t “know” unless you “try”. And this proposal, such as it is, seeks to get to the try part sooner rather than later. To wit, despite their best efforts, there are many Web3 games portals sitting on underperforming games - games which I am all but certain those teams thought would make it. I keep coming back to Treasure because, until Xai came along, they were the gold standard for curating Web3 games on ARB. So, same story there. Go look at other portals such as Kap Games or any of the chains or portals that host Web3 games - they’re ALL down bad. It’s actually depressing tbh. But that’s precisely how trad gaming started.
Take a look at this chart. It’s an insight to why Web3 games - across all genres - are struggling for adoption.
And as I’ve written before, it’s not that they are bad games. It’s mostly that, as I’ve found, the mindset of Web3 gamers isn’t like that of trad gamers. The former care more about bags than about the game. This is a huge insurmountable problem that I don’t see a fix for because the Web3 gaming culture, even with a cross-over with trad gaming, is all about “ownership”, which in turn is about “profit”.
Web3 games, already facing headwinds, have already hit the “Steam Wall” whereby there are so many games - mostly bad ones - that separating the wheat from the chaff is an exercise in futility.
All of this is me saying that it doesn’t matter how it’s done - and no matter the costs involved - there’s always going to be [research] factors that are bad enough to kill any idea such as this proposal. And throughout history, it’s known that you have no way to win if you don’t try first.
Yup. As you are already aware, I have repeatedly stressed these very same points.
However, the flipside of this is that there are in fact Web3 games currently in dev, and which are the targets of initiatives from various chains. I would know this because, like myself, I have several friends in both indie and AA space who are working on transitioning their in-dev games to Web3 - if they could.
IMX just put together another $100MM initiative to fund games because they, like most of us in the industry, know what’s going on out there. And all the chains remotely interested in games have similar initiatives - even if they’re not announced.
The risk there is not only the Web3 gaming stigma (which I believe is slowly subsiding as more and more good games sans cash grab tokenomics are released) , but also the fact that throwing everything at the [gaming] wall to see what sticks, means spending a lot of money.
In fact, at the on-going GDC, XAI just inked a deal with The MIX to bring some present and upcoming games to Web3. That’s a big deal. However, it doesn’t matter how many of those actually making the transition; what matters is how many are done properly and succeed. To me, that’s the console/pc game port fiasco all over again. Trad gamers will rebel, but bringing those games to Web3 is crucial to growth; and not all of them have to succeed.
An initiative like this - which as anyone who bothers to read my missives knows I was first to highlight all the pitfalls - if handled correctly, has the potential to bring gamers to the ARB ecosystem; regardless of the quality of the games. The issue is, are there enough gamers in the ARB ecosystem to support the games? I mention this because since I came here, I have had several discussions with a few people within the ecosystem about my doubts in that regard. For example, what’s the impetus for coming to ARB, as opposed to IMX, AVAX, WAX etc - all of which have large gaming communities who are all-in on their [gaming] engagement? That’s the sad reality of the situation. It’s the same thing over at my ApeCoin DAO where they’re not remotely serious about games - unless ofc it’s Yuga or Animoca or their partners - and those games fail. I would know that too because I tried - and failed, alongside other experienced teams. So, we all just went elsewhere.
If you don’t have a community that is serious about games, it doesn’t matter how much money you throw at gaming, it will all be for naught. But you still have to try.
I always put my money where my mouth is because I am notorious for not beating around the bush or saying/writing things that people want to hear. So, let me say this. Some in this community know that I have two Web3 games in dev - both currently targeted for a competing chain; and both on track for YE24 and H1/25 deployment, respectively. Now, you tell me, what’s the incentive for deploying on ARB? From the perspective of a smart person, it should be obvious that this GCP proposal presents a blue ocean opportunity for any games team taking the risk of actually deploying on ARB as opposed to the other chains already saturated with games (most of which are underperforming). But that strategy will only succeed if the community believes in and supports the initiative. Yet still, what’s the benefit of leaving a 10K strong gaming community to deploy at one with 2K? This is the battle ahead that eclipses the financial concerns of this proposal. As I’ve said before, throwing money at game devs is neither a sustainable strategy nor does it provide an edge in an industry where all of the chains serious about games are already throwing money around. Some devs will transition because they need the funds, while others will stay or transition depending on the community support at those chains.
I have to mention that, as of this morning when I checked, the proposal has already exceeded 95MM votes (98.92%) - with all the whales and large delegates carrying it. What that shows is that, despite some concerns about this proposal, the voters recognize that something has to be done. But at the same time, my guess is that they trust that the Council and Catalyst teams will self-govern while ensuring that the funds are put to good use, and as per best efforts and practices. Just like any venture.
Yup. Also, something that I have written tomes about. In fact, I just posted on X about a blog which I wrote in Nov 2021 highlighting this specific concern.
The issue here is that most see Web3 gaming as a money making venture. I mean, what did anyone expect when the whole culture was born on the wings of Play-To-Earn (P2E)? I’ve said over and over that it was going to be the very one thing that will stifle Web3 gaming adoption. And so it came to pass.
However, the flipside here is that if you make good, fun and engaging games - even with tokenomics - they will stand out. I mean, games which are glorious cash-grabs, don’t exactly hide it. And the reasons that they are no longer being played is because the LP has been drained, and so, there are no longer incentives for farmers and the like to play them. They just move on.
This is where the Catalyst group, in funding games, has to know every single detail about the game, the mechanics, tokenomics etc. And as I said in the education thread, this is why this whole proposal is basically a massive $400MM BD venture which is akin to an investor/publisher/distributor setup. And for that, it absolutely requires a team with that level of experience. And even then, that’s not a guarantee of success.
All very good points; particularly about the need for further dialog other than just rushing into this proposal. I pointed out the same things; and Karel’s response was enough to satisfy my concerns.
Whether or not the Council or the Catalyst group adheres to them, is another story. But I am confident that the community will hold those teams accountable as things progress. What I am personally going to pay attention to, isn’t actually the process, but rather the choice of hires as well as the criteria set for the curating games.
From all my experience in the games industry, one thing is certain and has always been the case, all it takes is that one game to make a difference. It’s why publishers, distributors, console manufacturers etc. go to great pains - and at great cost - to pick out games they can make bets on. You win some, you lose some; but in every case, all it takes is that one bet. And so, the GCP has to find that one game, and the community needs to rally around it because if they don’t, you end up in a situation whereby the game dev gets funding for their game, then the community abandons it - for whatever reason. And that’s precisely why I have been calling for the criteria to be one in which the games build and stay on ARB - at least for a term - and, depending on the funding amount, no tokens designed as ICO be allowed.
