Nouns-themed on-chain retro gaming arcade

NounsDAO NounsDAO Proposals
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ABSTRACT

We developed a very efficient on-chain compression algorithm that allows us to put very complex pieces fully on-chain (games, images, gifs, etc.). This proposal is to fund the building of a Nouns-themed on-chain retro gaming arcade that will make Nouns a household name using the appeal of retro games and their huge target audience.

MOTIVATION

I joined Nouns DAO with a mission to grow the Nouns brand, and to take the NFT space forward using the DAO’s power.

One of my greatest achievements is my on-chain compression mechanism which we already put to good use when we dropped the gmoney Brick Breaker game - the first fully on-chain game (which is inside the NFT itself). We compressed it from about 1MB to about 20KB - meaning ~50x.

After showcasing this game, I wanted to make something bigger, and immediately thought about Nouns, as there are so many noun combos and it is cc0, and I believe that they have a Super-Mario or Sonic like appeal that can become something huge.

That’s when I came up with the idea of really making an on-chain retro gaming eco-system based on nouns, where every few months we will drop a new game. It will have a decentralized leaderboard, tokens, and more.

I believe this could make Nouns known all over the world, and can attract interest from gaming companies, and media companies.

Another important derivative motivation is that it will help us compress a number of cc0 collections to be used in the games - Nouns, Toadz, mfers, and more - which we will put on-chain.

So TL;DR -

  1. Cutting-edge tech
  2. Making nouns huge
  3. Moving collections to be on-chain.

WHY DO WE NEED THE INVESTMENT?

In order to develop a long-term product aiming to lure in big companies like Nintendo or SEGA, we need a team of devs, a product manager, a marketing expert, and a biz dev manager.

Most of the budget will be spent on salaries, and some on marketing campaigns, and biz dev expenses.

The budget will be given for running as a team for 1 year.

Monthly budget breakdown -

5 full-stack devs’ salaries (including myself) - 20 eth
1 product manager - 4 eth
1 marketing manager - 4 eth
1 biz dev manager - 5 eth
Marketing campaigns and expenses - 5 eth

Total of 38 eth per month.

12 months x 38 eth = 456 eth

I will give more info about it below -

ASK

We’re asking for 456 total, but split to milestones, and streamed monthly (~38 eth per month), with an estimated 5 months delivery on the first milestone.

MILESTONES

Milestone 1 (~5 months) - A generative drop of 10,000 generative Noun-themed Super-Mario-like fully on-chain games, where Nouns are the Marios, and the enemies are Toadz.

Deliverables -

  • 10,000 unique games
  • A decentralized secure leaderboard
  • Compressed nouns, toadz, and mfers to be put on-chain

Milestone 2 (~7 months) -
We aim to deliver a fully operational ecosystem that will allow us to release more Noun-themed retro games and for people to engage with using “arcade tokens”, winning prizes, and more.

Milestone 3 (~5 months, but no budget asked for that atm) -
An API that will allow everyone to use our compression algorithm, to make more on-chain content.

WHY SHOULD YOU SUPPORT THIS INITIATIVE?
I believe that the power of nouns is in their simplicity and their ability to infiltrate into mainstream culture. I believe that NFTs are also going to infiltrate mainstream culture more, and games are a great champion that can lead the way there. Combining Nouns, gaming, and blockchain can benefit Nouns in a way we’ve never seen before, and the derivative benefits for the space are huge - Nouns as a household name, using the compression tech to make more complex content available on-chain, and more.

FEEDBACK

It is the second time I’m writing this after a back-and-forth with this amazing community that gave me valuable feedback. Please read and give me more feedback, because I want this proposal to pass.

2 Likes
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I love this!
Looking forward to playing the games :nerd_face:

1 Like
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This sounds amazing. I have played the ArcadeNFT minigame they dropped to Toadz holders last year and it amazed me how all that jazz can be coded into an image file and playable on OS for example. (Assuming it is similar tech to what you have used for the gmoney game.) Can’t wait to see what you will be able to do with Nouns and other cc0 collections!

1 Like
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Hey! Thanks!

Well, our tech is based on a very efficient on-chain compression algorithm we developed in-house, that is still top secret (until we make the API), and is based on computer vision, image processing, text compression and more techniques we came up with.

2 Likes
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Huge fan of your / GMoney / GM420 Labs’ work - hope this proposal picks up some steam :slight_smile:

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Thanks a lot! Appreciate that. I hope so too.

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Very cool, I assume this means you can encode more complicated games, which is exciting! wen Nounish Mario Bros :eyes:

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That’s what we’re planning!

1 Like
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I feel I have a lot of questions but need to gather my thoughts.

Meanwhile, I just saw that it looks like your Animetas game comes out in a couple of days, so I actually would love to check that out first so I can learn some things and perhaps we can use it as a touchstone to refer to this?

1 Like
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You can also check out the referenced which is already released :slight_smile:

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Hey!

The Animetas game is much different. It is not on-chain at all.

We already delivered the gmoney Brick Breaker which is fully on-chain, and you can check it out on OS.

Feel free to ask any question. I’d love to tell more about my plan.

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Hi cyber, thanks for the thorough proposal .Should we be picturing this as more or less a fork of Mario 1 in terms of look/feel? Might be helpful to provide some examples of art, if possible?

I think we will likely need more detail/comparison benchmarks wrt compression deliverables (eg making Nouns storage more efficient) in order to have a chance at getting consensus on the proposal in its current form. If the primary deliverable is 10k procedural variants of a retro platformer put on chain I suspect (though certianly can’t say for sure) the proposal will not pass due to the size of the ask.

That said, I do imagine the dao would love to have a chance to fund revolutionary compression tech (we’ve all seen Silicon Valley haha) . How much more efficient is your approach vs state of the art? For example, I believe there are efforts underway to migrate Toadz; how much can you save them in deploy costs?
Thanks again! hopefully we can get the proposal into a form/scale that works for everyone.

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Thanks, I get the difference between the two, and the on-chain part (and have already checked out brick breaker). But that doesn’t really show me anything about your ability to deliver an engaging and quality game since it was basically just a proof of concept of the tech.

I am assuming the Animetas game will give me more insight into your ability to deliver something actually engaging.

At these kind of prices and with the goal being to make a video game, I would be hoping it will be something that is going to have cultural reach, rather than only the impressive technical feat.

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So for example, our POC of Toadz, which was only intra-image, and not cross-image compression made it from about 14 KBs per toad (excluding the gif ones atm, but we have stuff going on there as well) to about 190 Bytes.

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HoverBlast is launching today after a long back and forth with a dedicated group of Beta Testers. Gustavo made the amazing art, as always, and my team was in charge of developing a fun and addictive game.

Now, what I’m planning here is an entire ecosystem, and not just this game. Having said that - we are planning that the development of this game, besides being cool tech-wise, will be super fun, and with a lot of Nounish motives.

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Is there a way to restrict the game, such that only the address that owns it can access the game?

2 Likes
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Yes. You can. That’s what I’m planning to do.

1 Like
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I’m supportive of a proof of concept proposal to develop a single Nouns-themed game before taking further steps.

You’ve mentioned that the compression will be open-sourced eventually. What are the conditions that must be met to do so?

Additionally, I’m assuming these NFT games will not be free. If not, how are you thinking about pricing? Are you planning a DAO allocation or similar mechanism?

1 Like
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Hey! First of all, I have an updated proposal here - Generative on-chain Nounish Super-Mario-like game (cyberh49)

I changed it to a POC only.

About Open-sourcing - we want to bring it to perfection with a few more drops we’re working on using it, so it will be on a second milestone.

I’m thinking about pricing them somewhere between 0.05-0.1 per piece, because I want to keep them affordable.

I will give every noun a free one to claim :slight_smile:

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Absolutely amazing - good luck with it!