Wizard Wednesday Recap, 2023-01-25
This Wizard Wednesday was hosted by Elf, dotta, and "deadsnake" (bearsnake). He has been decapitated by the Hall of Cats, which has gotten out of control.
Community Q&A
(Note: Community Q&A has been abridged to project-related Q&A, especially discussion that reveals new information)
This week we had a series of interesting questions about the Runiverse game, the first being - wen game?
- Madotsuki: No hard date yet, but we’re getting closer to the first stages of our 2023 roadmap. This past week, we delivered the Runiverse land plots that were sold in the private investment round last year. The investors have agreed not to sell any of their plots until a future date. And not 100% of those land plots have been delivered yet, because of the vesting schedule, and due to the fact that some of the purchased land is in areas that haven’t been developed yet. And their holdings will not monopolize any region of the map.
- Dotta: There are 70K plots overall. This first round had about 10K plots sold. The initial public sale will be roughly that many as well. These public sale plots will be in the initial zones of the game.
Are the private sale land plots protected from trading?
- Dotta: The plots are vested every block over a couple of years, so currently only a small portion are in investor hands. That means that there are a few hundred currently that could technically trade. But these are investors that we personally know, and we’re not expecting high volume on this category of plots prior to the public sale.
Snoopdoug: How much will the plots cost? Do I need to start saving up?
- Dotta: I don’t have the price sheet in front of me, but the pricing of the private sale plots was in USD, and those same prices will be used for the public sale. Only certain zones in the game are available to be land plots, and even those are not contiguous. So you can’t buy adjacent smaller plots to form a de facto giant plot. The plots are separated from each other. Resource output is linear, and there are certain types of structures that require a larger plot to even build. So there are benefits to larger plots. The prices are known, but they haven’t been published. An 8x8 will be hundreds, not thousands, of USD.
Shroomlord: Any timeline on the next game demo for holders?
- Madotsuki: Over the next couple weeks we’ll have a closed alpha for early investors. After that, a larger closed beta. Even if you don’t get into the closed waves, there will be subsequent rounds as well.
Tania del Rio: Wen Forgotten Peasants 100K collection?
- Elf: We’ve had these discussions in the Discord sometimes. The idea of an extremely large, very low cost collection to open the Runiverse to anyone who wants. But as far as wen: TBD, if ever at all.
- Bearsnake: Definitely no concrete plans. The concept of that kind of collection would have to go hand in hand with a larger media expression, like the TV show launching, or the Runiverse game reaching a milestone.
- Elf: It is something fun to think about. If you have 2 million fans, what do you give to the kid who is a fan of the TV show and asks their parents for a digital collectible?
- Dotta: In my opinion, the Warrior price is completely affordable as a collectible where you want to build up the character as saleable IP. And there’s a limit on how many characters can even be developed, due to the Dunbar number. This is a cognitive limit of the number of ppl you can keep track of, around 150. Even a media property like GoT has at most a few hundred characters, and most people wouldn’t be able to name more than 100. I’m more interested in the idea of PartyDAO, where people collaborate to make a single character legendary. I think the Runiverse game will be the right application for the personal “player-character” where you can collect equipment and XP.
Virgilius: Can you give a few more uses for the Athenaeum collection?
- Elf: The baseline utility is storytelling, and I have seen a lot of that occur on Twitter and the Book of Lore around these items. Other utilities in the future - we’ve talked about the staking mechanism being built. I will say that there are potential uses for items there. It might also play into the shapeshift functions. For example, put one of the items in your Wizard’s hand instead of their original prop (cosmetic only, doesn’t affect original token traits or rarity). We are building an ecosystem to maximize for fun and worldbuilding.
Elf Discourses on the Runiverse Moon
MehsterBrown: How many moons are in the Runiverse?
Elf: The Runiverse is Earth in the future, literally. So there is one moon, but I’m not totally sure on this, I just think this is the case. The reason I’m not committing to it, is because the Runiverse is a reflection of the real world. And in our world, fact-based universal reality is not in place. Flat earthers and moon landing hoaxers exist. In the minds of human beings, it’s impossible to have 100% consensus on how the world is built. So I’m sure even the number of moons does not have a consensus. And I’m trying to adhere to this reality, and that’s the only way to have a decentralized world-building project. But maybe some wizard astronomer will discover another one behind the one I can see. So any statements I make on the Runiverse are just my take.
My take is this: I’ve been putting the moon motif on many things we’ve built. It is a powerful symbol of the magic & the machine. The movements of the cosmos seem to work in precise, machine-like ways. That’s why I like the Flammarion engraving of looking beyond the firmament. The size and distance of our moon is critical to the ecosystem of this planet. If any detail were to change, the effect would be catastrophic. The moon has a lot of presence in mysticism as well. In the Runiverse, magic has entered the world, and perhaps the movements of the moon have an impact on that, such as on the formation of neo-Pangaea.
3D Models Update
Elf: 3D models have been taking up most of the Magic Machine artists' time over the past few months. And I have an exciting announcement to make - we have all the models done for the early adopter group! (These were for people who reached out to Elf via DM when the call went out late last year.) They will be delivered next week, and they look amazing.
Elf: We had to make sure that every single head aligns with every single body, that it worked mechanically and looks good too. These are metaverse assets. They have to work in many contexts. We are working with other 3D teams, and we had to make sure our characters work with each of their metas. I can’t wait until we can talk about those partnerships as well. We will deliver these as 3DS files, the texture files as PNGs, you can use them as they are, or edit them in photoshop. We can also deliver them in Blender or Maya if you prefer. You can use these in any fashion you can think of. We want you to have fun with them, but also test them out and let us know if you have any issues. We eventually want all 10K Wizard models out there, followed closely by the Souls. And if you are non-technical and don’t know the 3D software tools, we want to develop tools that allow you to work with them, we have fun ideas in this area.
Jitcy Plays in the Sewers
Jitcy gained some renown this past week by having the top high score on Dookie Dash (the BAYC game) for a time. Jitcy said that this contest fed into his competitive drive to get good at something. He hadn’t focused on a speed runner type game before, but his previous experience in competitive gaming helped him adapt to this game. There is a time commitment required as well. Jitcy loves this though, because the potential of blockchain gaming attracted him to this space in the first place. Previously, Jitcy feels like high-skilled players hadn’t been compensated fairly, and this is a way to rectify that.
Dotta asked Jitcy about how he approaches practice in these games. Jitcy: eSports players are real athletes because of the way they approach the game. There are hobby players that play for fun and escapism, vs. true competitors that approach it professionally to be the best. To get good requires a combination of analysis, practice, and time. Jitcy described how he analyzed Dookie Dash, day by day, shifting his focus areas in a structured way. But in the end, refusing to lose & grinding longer than anyone else is key to being at the top.
Elf: I think in 5 to 10 years Jitcy will be a wandering Kobold who gets paid to game. I think that’s your future. Dotta: What he’s saying is, you’re fired. Bearsnake: I think the next generation will school Jitcy. Like the 10 year-olds will own Jitcy in VR. Jitcy: You may very well be right, reflexes are a big part of many games. But I’m happy if I can advance the community's development through my play.
Elf: Dookie Dash is a Web3 game that has become very popular, and I think we have been waiting for the NFT or Web3 app that catches fire. Jitcy: I’m a huge maxi for skill-based games, because my performance can reflect my level of commitment. This game has a high skill ceiling, allowing everyone to decide how much they want to play and improve.
Cult Content Shout-outs
BlackSand Pony Racing: Elf updated the results for Week 6 races. Prizes, as usual, were donated from the community. Examples include, an Eternal Rose to mala, a BlackSand mount to Sharon, and a @TinyCultDolls from MehsterBrown for last place. Lucky 13th place, was a treat box from Red, that went to Henry Boyd. BlackSand has also assembled the city guard, just in time for the last race of the Ether Cup Championship...
Elf discovered that Tania del Rio has started a Twitter thread called, “The Cult Content Chronicle” on her Twitter page. So he will use this as long as he can as a source for his shout-out on Wizard Wednesday. Elf's shout-outs followed Tania's thread exactly (spoiler alert: he loved all of them), so please check it out to see many of the wonderful Cult creations that have been created recently!