Proposal: THE NOUNSVITATIONAL: Tier 1 Dota 2 Esports Event!

Hello NounsDAO!

We are Weplay, a globally recognized Esports event company who specialize in creating groundbreaking productions in the world of gaming. From weekly shows with the NFL and top Twitch Streamers, to multi-million dollar Esports events such as the (Emmy Nominated) Dota 2 Animajor, we pride ourselves on making the most memorable and exciting events in Esports.

Now, it’s time for Nouns to have one of it’s very own: THE NOUNSVITATIONAL!

Please watch our short VIDEO PROPOSAL BELOW!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pet9rHvlNs


Short and sweet: we believe that an Esports event can take Nouns to new heights. We don’t want to just show people some Noggles and call it a day - We want to enact a 3 step mass integration program designed around introducing (and integrating) the esports public at large into Web3, Nouns communities, and furthering the Nouns mission.

Introduction

We first learned about Nouns after your fantastic Dota 2 team entered the scene, and we got to know a few of the amazing folks over at the Nouns Esports crew. After doing our research on Nouns, we were impressed to find a group of people who were different from the normal Dota 2 Esports sponsors. In a scene plagued by Betting Companies, Scam Coins, and other nefarious evil doers, it was refreshing to find a group of people using Crypto in a positive way; One that we would be proud to partner with to spread their message. Weplay prides itself on being the best in our industry and working with the best in their industry, and we believe that this project would be one of those partnerships.

What we Offer

What Nouns Proposals have been doing so far is great, but we believe we can do so much more for the growth of Nouns in the eyes of the general public. Many of your successfully executed Proposals in the past have focused on getting the brand of Nouns out there with general advertising methods of simply “showing the brand”. What we offer is not only brand recognition, but brand integration, on a wide and universal scale.

We don’t just want people to know what a Noggle is. We want people to know about the Nouns mission, the point of a DAO, and to get people who have never heard of Crypto or NFT’s (even people who actively dislike them) to see the Web3 world in a positive light-by having them actively participate in a system designed around a event that we know they want to watch.

The 3 Step Plan

Our idea is simple: get viewers to come for the Dota, and stay for the Nouns.

  1. ENTERTAIN

Creating a custom, interesting Dota Tournament structure with a dual purpose of getting as many viewers as possible to watch due to it’s innovative nature, world class teams, and Dota’s best Talent while also subtly introducing them to a DAO structure in a positive way.

  1. EDUCATE

Once they come for the world-class Dota, educate them about Nouns with direct, custom created content which Nouns can use forever (Nouns explainers, DAO explainers, Web3 explainers, and even mini-docs about past successful proposals and interviews) which we will play in-between the games to show that Nouns are one of the good guys, and that this system is something they can be a part of

  1. INTEGRATE

By possibly using a POAP system, but focusing on a “Mini Dota DAO” designed around people who have no idea what Web3 is or don’t even have crypto wallets, we aim to make the “scary world of crypto” something that viewers actively participate in-both rewardin g and fun as they collect Dota 2 themed POAPs during the event. By utilizing in-game systems, viewers can even trade these POAPs for digital cosmetics in Dota 2, giving them real value to the average viewer.

The Event

The Nounsvitational will be a world class five day Dota 2 Tournament featuring ten of the top teams worldwide with the best broadcast talent in the Dota scene held from February 14th to February 18th. This will be a Tier 1 Dota 2 event, and the first LAN in DotA since the International World Championships in October. This will be the long awaited return of Weplay to the Dota 2 scene (voted best Tournament Organizer in the scene, even surpassing Valve, the game’s creator itself), and the first non-traditional Custom Game Mode LAN in several years. Suffice it to say, this event is going to be EXTREMELY hype for the average Dota viewer.

Using our custom map makers, we will transform the Dota 2 in-game map to be a Nounish playground, full of memes, references, and general Nouns branding so that millions of viewers will see Nouns during the games themselves. Between the games, we will utilize our content creation skills to produce and air custom Nouns video content, which will educate the viewers on Noun’s culture, structure, mission, and past projects.

Held in the Weplay Studio in Los Angeles, we will bring the best teams around the world to play, and invite as many Nouners and Nounsfolk as we can to be part of the audience, for a once in a lifetime exclusive and intimate experience.

Integrating the General Public to Web3

The event itself will get people’s attention: they will watch for the unique structure and for the world class competition. But our true goal will be to get the viewers to understand and integrate into the Nouns culture while they watch a fantastic event.

Our plan for this is also 3 fold.

  1. Traditional Pre-Event marketing of Giveaways, pushing people to join the Nouns Esports Discord, follow the Nouns Social media, and even give away tickets to attend the event live. Combined with the content we create at the event, we will ensure that people WANT to watch the content we provide, so they can understand the “scary world of crypto”
  2. Contacting the best artists and creators in Dota to make custom Dota 2 POAP art, which we will give away to viewers who watch the event. This will not only drive up viewership, but with a integrated system where viewers can trade POAPs for in game cosmetic items, chances to win prizes, and other benefits, we will not only subtly introduce the average viewer to the world of NFTs, we will ensure that they have fun doing it and can trade them for real value.
  3. Creating a "Mini Dota DAO’’ prior to the event, which will not only advertise the event during it’s duration on Reddit and other platforms, but show the general viewers that not all NFT and Web3 projects are “bad guys” and that the Nouns protocol is something that is actually cool, using a real tangible example that makes the Dota 2 community a better place.

We believe that by letting the viewers not just watch the Event, but actively participate in the event with POAP collecting, exchanging, and voting for how to “better the world of Dota” with a Nounish DAO system will achieve the greater purpose of the event. Come for the Dota, Stay for the Nouns.

How does this Proposal Benefit Nouns?

  • All video content created for the event (the explanatory videos, documentary like series, ect) and the content from The Nounsvitational itself will be usable by the Nouns community as both “proof of concepts” and general media Nouns will be able to use forever. This media, especially explainer videos on what Nouns, Web3, DAOs, have great value for future proposal endeavors.
  • Fantastic way to showcase current and past Nouns projects to first time viewers in a captive audience. Can use already created media from other successful Proposals and expand on them with interviews from the people that made them happen
  • HUGE viewership and outreach to a variety of new, interested viewers in the world of Esports (a community that has a lot of crossover with Web3 already) in a positive, productive way in a scene that views other projects very negatively
  • Cements the Nouns brand in a very valuable space with tangible, easy to gather data showcasing sign ups, viewers, and active participants for future project proposals
  • Active (and trackable) onboarding of the general public to Web3 ideas and systems in a fun and dynamic way where they feel rewarded and positive about their experience, which is one of Noun’s core goals
  • Growing Nouns communities by incentivising viewers to join for access to prizes, events, and other incentives along with getting them onboard with the general Nouns ecosystem
  • Come to LA! Nouns holders as well as Nouns community members can come and be part of the audience for the event, meet the players and the Talent, and have the experience of a lifetime! Great reward for your already amazing community members!

Ask and Budget Breakdown

Total Budget: 799 ETH (at $1200) $958,800

Categorized Breakdown:

Prizepool - 166 ETH $200,000
Flights, Accommodation, Food for Teams: 171 ETH $205,200
Change Dota Challenge Seeding - 10 ETH $12,000
Customization of Dota 2 Map, In-Game integrations - 40 ETH $48,000
Talent Fees - 55 ETH $66,000
POAP Integrations - 7 ETH $8400
VIP Experience for winning Nouners 10 ETH $12,000
Complete Event Fulfillment (Production, Graphics Design, Stage, Venue, Content, Staffing, Security): 340 ETH $408000

Event Timeline

Media Day: Feb 13
Group Stage: Feb 14-Feb 15
Playoffs: Feb 16-Feb 18

About Us

We are Kyle and Slacks, two prominent Dota 2 talent who also work at Weplay. SirActionSlacks has worked directly with Valve, the creators of Steam and Dota 2 in both Business Development and as an associate producer of The International, the Emmy award winning 42 million dollar Dota 2 event since 2017. He has also created the only “Alternate Game Mode” events in Dota 2 history, including Midas Mode 1 and 2, Elimination Mode, The Captain’s Draft Minor, and many others. While not making Dota 2 events, Slacks enjoys playing Dota 2 pubs and hosting/casting at events as Talent.

Kyle is also a Dota 2 Talent and former successful professional player who has been working to grow the world of Esports at Weplay behind the scenes on dynamic and groundbreaking productions such as the wildly successful Omega League and Dota 2 Animajor, a official Valve major. Kyle’s brother was recently on the Nouns Esports team, and now ironically is on Slack’s Dota 2 esports team.

As for Weplay, It’s difficult to describe a company that prides itself on spectacle in a written format, so check out some of our content!

Augmented Reality Showreel
2021 General Event Showreel

Thank you!

As we said, we are big fans of Nouns and everything you are trying to do in the space. We truly believe that this event will not only be incredible for Nouns, but also be a fantastic and unforgettable experience for the people in the Nouns community that join us live, virtually, and the Dota 2 community at large. We hope you will consider our proposal and would love to have any comments, feedback, and suggestions. We want to build this event for you, but also build it WITH you, to make sure we make it as NOUNISH AS POSSIBLE!

Thank you

Slacks and Kyle
Weplay Esports


ADDITIONAL INFO

Still looking for some more, condensed information? Then please continue reading!

On Dota 2

Currently, Dota 2 is the 2nd most played game on Steam, the biggest gaming platform in the world. It reaches a global audience with millions of active players each day, and even more viewers on it’s Esports events.

Currently, Dota 2 is experiencing a resurgence of the most viewers and players since 2013!

While most Triple A games and Esports require multi-million dollar fee to enter into the sphere with licensing fees and IP protection, Valve allows anyone to do anything with their games, giving full mod tools to players. This allows us to create a very Nounish event for a game with one of the highest viewership numbers in all of Esports. This event would only be possible in Dota, and Dota is our specialty here at WePlay.

In terms of reach and scale of viewers, the numbers are hard to come by as China and Russia have viewership data that is not easily accessible, but viewership of top events (such as The International and the Weplay Animajor) can reach into the millions from the English audience alone.

For a full breakdown of the Viewership of Weplay’s last event, please check out this link

On the “Mini Dota DAO”

We know the mission of Nouns is to gather together and pool resources to make the world a better place. But, the concept of a DAO and the betterment of society that can be caused their-in is something completely foreign to most people. To help the viewers understand (and subtly advertise the event) we propose holding a Mini Dota DAO, a system that is modeled after Nouns itself!

The process is simple. At the start of the event, we announce that we will take a percentage of the prize pool and allocate that money to “make Dota 2 better”. Then, we will start a Reddit thread (Dota 2’s primary community hub) where people are able to offer suggested Proposals for how to spend that money to make Dota better. During the duration of the tourney we will actively check in on this thread, promote it, and encourage people to add to the charitable donation if they wish for some in-game perks like having messages appear during the game on the in-game map. At the end of the event, we will have a vote and choose which idea the community suggested to allocate funds to and announce the winner.

The point of this is for the community to be HEAVILY INVESTED in the tournament and the suggestions on their Mini DAO, but more importantly by the end of this promotion they will VERY CLEARLY understand the Nouns structure and mission, without being simply told how it works.

9 Likes

Hello! Here to answer any questions or to engage with any feedback! Thank you so much for reading!

3 Likes

Awesome to see this from conceptualization to discourse and eventually on-chain and on-stage. This proposal is one of the largest for Nouns yet. The content, proliferation, and engagement coming will be felt for years.

LFG! ⌐◨-◨

3 Likes

thanks a ton! It’s a big boy but we firmly believe that the benefits will be THICC as well!

3 Likes

A compelling presentation. As an esports events company owner myself, I definitely appreciate the thoughtfulness in this proposal. Definitely one to be considered, even though it’s the biggest Nouns has ever done. Massive potential.

3 Likes

Doesn’t get more endemic than Slacks with Dota. This prop would bring Nouns front & Center to over a hundred thousand Dota fans as well as a very capable operator.

Esports has a lot of crossover with Web3 so if Nouns can provide a good web3 enabled experience to web2 esport fans in a positive, productive way it would help change the negative connotations that surround crypto and web3. This prop is ambitious and I’m confident Weplay would do a great job. I attended their Animajor in Ukraine and the set was unreal. Weplay could also become a long-term partner who is utilized by Nouns to support other digital entertainment experiences besides Dota.

1 Like

Hey Slacks,

Can you share any details on the DAO infrastructure you are planning on using? What smart contract you are planning on implementing? I reached out on Reddit (DM) as well if you prefer to respond in a less public forum.

Happy holidays if that’s your kind of thing.

the current plan is to do a very simplified version of a DAO so that the community can understand what they do and how it works. The idea at the moment is a simple Reddit thread where people can post their ideas on how to make the community a better place and spend that sequestered prize pool money. Simply posting a suggestion, seeing if it gets the upvotes and support, and then whoever has the most becomes the winner.

as for a system to ensure that there is no vote manipulation or bad actors, we were planning on researching the best way to go about a fair and balanced way for people to vote after the proposal is passed. We want to make this as easy to understand and participate as possible

Myself and my team have built out a number of DAOs with varrying degrees of complexity all around the world over the last 2 years. We have also sold out (developed & deployed) a number of collections and supported countless others to various degrees of success.

If you have any questions or need any help, I’d be happy to jump on a call to introduce myself and see if I can help.

1 Like

Yes, Dota 2 is a world-class game. Being a supporter of such an event is a big and responsible job. What other than investment will be required from the community? It just seems to me that this integration now looks like investing in a Dota 2 tournament. Such events are attracted by the game, and sponsors, as a rule, receive an insignificant part of the public attention.

2 Likes

Best of luck with this Slacks, dodgy betting companies are a plague on esports but as you know there aren’t many other companies out there willing to stump up the money to sponsor a tournament.

How will you and the team go about trying to control the narrative around this tournament given the negative reaction you have already faced from the DOTA community on reddit? I have followed DOTA for a long time, even made it to TI7 and have observed that once the hivemind determines that an element of the tournament is unsatisfactory, that narrative will be the one that is pushed at the expense of all the other good that a tournament may be doing.

The below quote was pretty representative of the reaction from the people in that reddit thread so I’d be interested to hear how you will tackle the “NFTs are a scam” crowd.

“Everyone involved in this should be ashamed of themselves.” - Sticker704

Can you give a couple of examples of where a sponsor of an esports tournament has used that sponsorship to promote their brand/product?

How much they paid. How successful it was etc.

2 Likes

Traditionally, I would agree with you in the case of large scale esports events. When a major Esports organizer puts on a event, the sponsors are typically relegated to some sort of “name drop” status, which only goal is for the viewer to see their name and forget about them (The MONSTER ENERGY REPLAY!).

I have always been against this type of advertising, as I feel it’s inherently worthless. This tournament exists not just name drop Nouns, but it’s entire identity revolves around changing the prerogative and negative association between projects like Nouns and bad actors in the space. The tournament structure, the segments in-between games, and the viewer prize system (along with the Mini DAO) all serve the purpose to showcase the positive aspects of Nouns and to ensure that the conversation can at least begin whereas most will simply ignore anything in the Web3 space.

As for the Nouns community, they just gotta show up (both live and in person as audience members in LA!) to show people that Nouners are normal cool folks. Our job is to get people to watch with the best Esports teams in the world, and to implement systems that help viewers understand what Nouns is trying to do. Your job: BE NOUNISH! Have fun!

1 Like

I think the thread on Reddit was a perfect example as to WHY something like this needs to happen for the Nouns community. At first, it was simply visceral rage as the project was associated with Web3 and NTF projects. However, as people began to dig deeper (and uncover what you guys do at Nouns-granted they dug deeper to try and find ammo to flame haha) the community in the thread itself determined that Nouns is not a typical protocol in the space.

This is basically the goal of the entire tournament. People WILL come for the Dota, even if their kneejerk reaction is “screw all Web3 things im just gonna watch for the games”, but…come for the games, stay for the Nouns.

How do I plan on changing their minds about Nouns? By telling them the truth. There is a reason I want to work with Nouns over any other NFT or Web3 company: because I actually think that what you guys are doing is not evil. I was one of these people before I did my research on Nouns as well, to which my reaction was: ok these guys don’t seem like scammers or bastards. I’m happy to show your world to people, because you are the good guys in a space of a lot of bad ones. So yeah, we are expecting people to react in a negative way. But Nouns is about doing good in a negative world, so all I think I need to do is effectively let people see what you’re all about, and they will see what I saw.

3 Likes

While I have hosted and worked as talent at a LOT of sponsored Esports Tournaments (one every 2 months for about 8 years?) it’s hard for me to tell you with exact numbers the cost spend and deliverables major events have had. With companies like Mercedes sponsoring ALL events a company puts on in the year, to one time sponsors for one time events, these numbers (both their spend and the successful deliverables) are typically kept behind closed doors between the organizer’s sales department and the company in question. From multi-millions to $10,000 between the scale and outreach of the event, the space is truly wild.

What I CAN tell you are the things that I, personally have run (prior to joining WePlay) in the space as a solo 3rd party tournament organizer. A good example would be my solo tourney Midas Mode, with promotions with the Kennedy Space Center, where NASA gave us a chunk of their marketing budget (about 50k per event) along with Betway, who provided about 300,000$ for prize pool and title sponsorship. After the event, feedback was extremely positive. Both had great viewership numbers and sign-ups, and both chose to do it again for Midas Mode 2.

What sets us apart from the other actors in the Esports space is that we are not out to get a sponsor then figure out how to squeeze them into the show. For us, we build the show AROUND the sponsors to identify how much valve they can have based on the deliverables we think would be the best for them. For the NOUNSVITATIONAL, Nouns IS the ONLY sponsor, an as such all of our deliverables and entire show is created around maximizing your investment. Once it’s passed, we can make sure our ideas on what Nouns needs and your ideas as a community align, then masterfully execute.

1 Like

Slacks,

Guessing you will be operating within the NFT Space MO?

So,

  1. Wen Twitter spaces AMA?
  2. Wen public sale (asking because you said crowd funded in the video)?
  3. Assuming there is a public sale, wen/how “allow list” aka white list?
  4. Have you considered token gated, exclusive events at the tournament, connected to either “rarity traits” associated with the NFTs, or POAPs?
  5. Is there a discord link I’m overlooking?

Exited to see where this goes my good man.

1 Like

I would find it hard to vote yes on something like this without something concrete to compare to. Numbers.

Would be different if this was in a ‘new’ area where direct comparables were not possible….but this is not one of those areas. We are voting based on pure guess work here.

Considering the size of the potential ask here and the type of event it would be, it would need to be fairly convincing how this would benefit nouns which, for me, it isn’t.

It’s pretty easy for me to throw random impressive numbers at you, but personally I don’t think this is a honest way of portraying what I think we could accomplish for Nouns with this event. Telling you that a past client I have worked with spent 50k to get 80,000 new users to sign up on their website using Esports advertising sounds nice, but that campaign has wildly different deliverables, goals and marketing; hardly comparable to what we are trying to do for Nouns. If we were in a private discussion with NDAs signed, I would also be happy to provide you with direct information about our past client’s spends and their success rates-but with the open forum nature of Nouns, this is pretty hard for us to do without breaking the trust of the people we worked with in the past; unfortunately most corporations don’t operate in as open a way as Nouns does. Suffice it to say, trying to impress you by throwing around million dollar advertising budgets and multi-million view counts or website purchases from the past seems disingenuous, because our goal isn’t to just let people see the Nouns name. It’s to change their opinions.

Past 3rd party viewership statistics of our events are public, so if you are looking to see the reach we have that’s open and easy to see!! But the spends by those sponsors in the past for those events had much different goals than we do for the Nounsvitiational. They wanted traditional advertisement. We want to fulfill specific goals.

The primary goal with this event, the best thing we can do for Nouns (in my opinion) is to start a discourse with as many people as possible about what Nouns is and help them change their minds about the Web3 community and subsequently Nouns as a whole. Start a conversation with as many viewers as possible, and encourage them to participate in the fun. The fact that this Discourse Thread is one of the most viewed threads of all time on the website already, without the event even taking place yet, should be a prime indicator that our goal of getting people’s eyes on Nouns and getting the conversation started is going to work.

While there have been many sponsors in Esports before, I would say that I have never heard of a event like the one we are proposing (where the entire event is built specifically themed around 1, universal sponsor) so I would say that we are in some pretty uncharted territory here. What I CAN offer you are Numbers you are able to have forever at Nouns after this event. With our engagement ideas (the POAP integrations, the discord and socials push, general viewership statistics and website re-direct links, and Mini Dota DAO participation) you will be able to have a full baseline of what kind of reach a event such as this can have, and hopefully have a standard of which you can use for subsequent events to live up too.

This is not a traditional advertising venture, where we just throw up the Nouns name or some Noggles on a billboard and call it a day. I’m sure in past passed proposals, where you did do such advertising it would also be difficult to put into hard numbers exactly how many people “changed their minds” about Web3 and onboarded to Nouns communities because of it. What we are offering with this event is the means to actually track this in real time, with systems in place encouraging people to participate and provide those numbers to you. Viewership statistics, tracking link clicks, mesuring new users to socials and providing stats on all those that participate in the POAP and Mini DAO integration. This is the benefit of holding a online event, as everything can be tracked and quantified in a valuable way.

Should the proposal pass, we would love to know the exact deliverables you, our client, would like to see, and formulate the best methods for getting those deliverables done. Do you want people to understand what Nouns is and change their negative stigma towards Web3? Do you want people to buy Nouns? Do you want people to spread the meme? Let us know, and we will get you as many Numbers as possible.

I appreciate your replay and apologies if this response was too long, but I just wanted to make sure I covered all the bases to give you our reasoning. Feel free to reach out again and appreciate your honesty!

3 Likes

Being interested in gaming + crypto can be a tough gig sometimes due to the knee jerk reactions from a very vocal minority, I hope you get a chance to try change some minds.

While it is far less of a barrier than the anti-crypto gaming crowd, you should take a look at how Gnars (a Nounish sub DAO) is spreading the word in extreme sports. Extreme sports and skateboarding can have a high barrier of entry for organisations and businesses that aren’t native to the scene and a low tolerance for bullshit so you might be able to get some inspiration and even some content to show to the gaming crowd of what good is being done around the world via Nouns.

https://twitter.com/gnars_dao

(a video showing what they have achieved so far)

P.S. I appreciate the fun you’ve added to the DOTA community over the years, fails of the week was always a staple with my friends, I can’t see a dairy cow now without thinking about Licky and it is impossible to go fishing without having “many many fish, many many fish” come to mind.

1 Like

E-sports has a great community and a big fanbase, however I am worried about the “Educate” part on the prop if OP doesn’t even have a crypto wallet.

1 Like