OK “Dude”,
I find your passion encouraging. Your attitude, spelling, repeatedly contradicting yourself, childish name calling, poor assumptions and clear lack of business acumen are a areas you may want to work on.
If there was any chance at all that this deal would not pass, it wouldn’t be discussed with you. Maybe work on that misplaced rage.
Uh oh, only one more day for comment!
I would like to go back to basics a little. First off, let’s look at the mission of BitDAO.
An unstoppable economy enabled by decentralized assets, decentralized technologies, and decentralized organizations .
And under Strategies
Create and partner with specialized autonomous entities for ecosystem funds, art, farming, R&D, venture, events, grants, education, DAO operations services, etc.
The Game7 DAO proposal definitely fits within the vision and the strategy of BitDAO. If we can all agree at this base level, then it seems there are a couple of sticking points: voting rights and the amount of money committed to the proposal.
First, let’s look at voting rights. BitDAO puts up 80% of the value, but does not have commensurate voting rights. In a standard business agreement this would seem strange, but, that is how BitDAO sees itself working. Again, from the BitDAO whitepaper:
Find ways to avoid micro-decisions from being bottlenecked by the top-level BitDAO governance process. Limit BitDAO governance to mandate and funding approval. Allow partners to be autonomous.
BitDAO states it does not want to get dragged down in day to day operations and governance. @JonAllen above post pretty handily states why and how this is handled:
A check on misuse of funds is that not all capital is distributed to autonomous entities like Game7 up front but rather through a series of funding top ups over several years. If BitDAO does not believe funds are being used appropriately, it can decide to not approve subsequent top up requests. Succinctly: BitDAO focuses on coordinating capital, and autonomous entities focus on building. Since the initial proposers of Game7 are such well known and experienced individuals, the initial funding is larger, but on other proposals where individuals are less established, we expect to see smaller, more frequent funding top ups to limit risk.
I also think the above paragraph helps answer the question of, “Why $500MM?” IMO, over the years way more than $500MM will be invested in this type of proposal, but as to why it would start at $500M now could be a little clearer. However, the top ups make sure that the money is helpful in moving the entire market forward, so essentially, it is $500MM as long as it is working.
This is a fantastic proposal, and I look forward to seeing how the World’s view of crypto gets changed over time as it gets more educated on the benefits that we all believe in.
The following will be my final comment on this proposal, it will probably turn out to be long. While I may not be a clever wordsmith like the angry young man who assaulted me with poor grammar and embarrassingly incorrect assumptions, I have a few things to say.
It’s probably best to let you know my history as it plays a large part in how I view things. I’ll try to bullet point when I can to keep it shorter.
Skip ahead, I built a mortgage company from 2 people to 30 in 6 months, once the Floor went computers.
I always maintained a trading account regardless of my job. I made my first crypto trade in Dec '17 on the CME, sorry not sorry lol. That short position rid me of a boss until this very day.
Shortly after I was approached to run a very private long only crypto Family Office. At that point I basically devoted my life to crypto and emerging technology.
I completed my charted for the Office about 8 months ago.
Outside of trading I’ve since advised two SOL startups to funding.
I have been around and learned a lot, and that Wall St. background will come full circle as TradFi enters the market more.
I’m used to working with sharks, so I approach deals accordingly.
I knew Game 7 was getting approved the day I saw it, but nobody should get a free lunch.
I willingly took what I knew to be a very unpopular position in this forum, that of Devil’s Advocate. I’m not afraid to be that guy. The sole purpose was simply looking out for the best interest of the DAO.
We need people who can answer uncomfortable questions, maintain themselves while being doubted. Those are leaders. I think of my opposition approach almost like a Litmus test, which everyone passed with flying colors… well, not the kid of course, but the people in the project.
With that said do I think it’s a perfect deal, not really. While I’m a solo act in here, I talk with some of the early investors in the DAO who have concerns of their own.
But once you’re in, you’re in. And I will do anything I can to help, support and promote any project under the umbrella.
Game 7 I have high hopes for you and honestly expect to see great things. I wish you all the luck and I’ll be around somewhere should you ever need a hand.
Cheers
John
Tl;dr - I support this proposal.
By way of background, my name is Neil Young - I’m the CEO of a game & platform company called N3TWORK. Before N3TWORK I founded ngmoco:) which was an early pioneer in the mobile free to play game space (Rolando, We Rule, Eliminate, Godfinger and the Plus+ network) which was acquired by DeNA where I served on the BoD and was the CEO of the business outside of Japan
I’ve spent my whole career in the games industry - first as a programmer in the UK working on games that would remind you how old I am… I was an Executive Producer and then Studio Head @ Virgin (I worked on Aladdin - First cell animated game & SubSpace - one of the first massively multiplayer realtime Action games on the internet) and then subsequently spent 11 years at Electronic Arts working on games like Ultima Online (One of the first MMORPGs), Majestic (EA’s one and only ARG) & The Lord of the Rings (EA’s biggest movie games) and working with some of the most amazing gamemakers as the GM of Studios like Origin Systems, Maxis and EA’s internal studios.
Thematically I’m attracted to platform and paradigm shifts in and around the space and have plenty of experience living through and often participating in those innovations.
At the risk of sounding hyperbolic - The transition that the industry is in the very early stages of experiencing in Blockchain is really like nothing that I’ve seen. Some have framed it to me as having the potential to make as big an impact as iPhone & Android have made on mobile games (which now account for over half of the total games industry @ $100bn/Yr). I think that this wildly understates how profound and impactful the “transition” to blockchain gaming will be.
Quick primer on, what in the games industry are usually called “Platform Transitions” (apologies if redundant for some of you)…
Every N years, the games industry evolves, usually around the introduction (by a hardware company) or adoption (due to availability) of a new technology or performance capability that requires gamemakers to adapt. Those adaptions lead to innovations, which grow and evolve the business.
Each platform transition comes with new challenges & opportunities for developers/publishers and new experiences for players. Looking back on these transitions, most of them have been 1 or 2 dimensional in that the big leap pushes on a single vector of improvement - eg. Processing power, storage medium, connectivity - An example of a platform transition might be the introduction of the Sony PSX (PSOne) ushering in a generation of consoles that were both more performant and used CDROMs as their storage medium.
Sometimes, like in the case of the transformation we’ve witnessed over the last decade in mobile, they come in the form of truly multi-dimensional transitions. In that case we saw the iPhone usher in a step change in performance, a fundamental shift in interface, an innovation in distribution and an innovation around connectivity.
During these transitional moments, there is a tremendous amount of support that flows into the eco-system, usually starting from those who have the most to gain by the adoption of the new technology. Centralized companies, with centralized agendas pushing centralized solutions to an eco-system of developers that would ultimately become dependent upon them.
This seems to me like it’s at the heart of the unique nature of this transition - This is as complex and broad a platform transition as our industry has ever seen. It has the ability to impact and affect what gamemakers make, how games are played, how they are made and who participates in their success. No single company has the motivation (pure or impure) or capacity to support it in the way that 1st Parties have supported platform introductions / transitions in the past.
In my mind, this is exactly why there is an essential necessity for the type of proposal that Game7 has put forward. One of, what I hope are many, DAOs that can broadly support and invest across the industry, to stimulate and accelerate the growth of blockchain gaming in a manner consistent with its promise.
My sense is that $500m is likely not going to be enough on its own, but it is a very good start and will make a meaningful impact. I would hope that this could be a first step on a journey for the Game7 DAO - If done right it should evolve and grow into a much larger initiative over the coming months and years. Importantly, it reads to me as an initiative that is started in the spirit of decentralization, which is the only true way to create uncapped abundance for every participant within the ecosystem - whether you are a player of the games or a player in the industry (hopefully you are both).
So it’s with this perspective that I support this proposal.
— Neil.
@ncyoung
A few thoughts @franklin-pantera …
Totally agree with your point - I didn’t read the education definition as prescriptive (ie. “Here’s how you win”) but rather, here are the core tenants and helping folks close their knowledge gap to the present asap. Once they are at the current state, they can participate in innovating more effectively. I also agree that this number could be low, if you expanded the target audience to include “players” who also need educating.
I don’t think it’s the right number - but it’s a good start and it’ll make an impact. Ultimately I think you’d want to see this expanding with this being a starting point. I don’t think that the emphasis in “Investment” should be overweight towards games per se (which is how the proposal reads) vs. generally deployed by merit across the categories of Content, Distribution, Infrastructure Tools & Services. It’s really easy to just go spend a bunch of money on games - The issue is that they take a long time to build and the market is moving quickly, but safely enabling world-class gamemakers, game technologists and enabling new methods and distribution to evolve with support so that they can generate the long run learning that will deliver the type of market adoption/expansion & returns that we’d all like to see from gaming around the blockchain should be prioritized.
I read the proposal as $100m today and subsequent capital is contingent on community partner votes and milestones defined in the bootstrapping stage. From a marketing standpoint, and pragmatically speaking a $500m fund will create its own deal-flow where as a $100m fund, is just another $100m fund. I think for Game7 to fulfil it’s potential, it should also be the winning fund, as well as one that is true to the ideals of the DAO.
Thank you Franklin, for taking the time to read the proposal in detail, and for the thoughtful comments. This is exactly the sort of engagement we hoped to see. Also really appreciate you posting this publicly, for transparency.
Before replying I want to say I want to be thorough, but not argumentative. I’m going point by point only to describe the thinking behind the proposal, and to discuss in the interest of transparency the points we feel passionately about.
Regarding Grants:
There’s a lot in the full proposal that I wholeheartedly agree with, primarily the Grants allocation and the need to fund open-source infrastructure, tools, primitives, regulatory education - all much-needed public goods that would move Web3 gaming forward significantly. 15% even seems low for this.
We agree the grants are exciting, and much needed. You’re right that there is a LOT more to do with web3 tech for gaming and that these grants will make a dent, but there is so much more ground to cover.
At the same time, we want Game7 to be self-replenishing, if possible. Pure grants help the whole ecosystem. But pure grants alone would mean Game7 would exhaust its resources in just a few years, no matter how much it starts with. We hope Game7 can be as close to perpetual as possible, as we think that will benefit both the direct DAO stakeholders and the ecosystem at large the most over time.
In modeling the proposed allocations, we looked at some of our work with evergreen endowments, foundations, and other institutions and tried to model appropriate ratios. As you are no doubt aware, the ratios here for grants are high relative to those comps. That means funds will be deployed into the ecosystem rapidly in order to try to make the biggest possible difference and induce the largest possible acceleration in the near-term.
In other words, this proposal already errs on the side of grants and deploying ecosystem resources. The hope is that the 80% strategic capital can do well enough despite the large grant and educational outlay ratios that the DAO can replenish itself and continue to provide more grants, education, and strategic capital over the long haul. While there is no guarantee that anything the DAO does will 100% succeed, we want Game7 to have an impact on the industry for decades to come.
When compared to other sizable pools of capital, we think Game7 compares well from an ecosystem perspective. As an unrelated but perhaps instructive example, it’s rare for, say, a VC fund to allocate anywhere near 20% of the capital it stewards to pure public goods, be they grants or education. This is one thing that excites us about Game7 and the potential for DAOs in general. There is much more room to experiment, and to seek models that align with broad communities , as opposed to maximizing value for a narrow set of stakeholders.
Regarding Education:
I’m slightly less convinced on the Education allocation and whether this is overly prescriptive for an area that’s still largely experimental where the “playbook” is barely written. It seems more likely to me that the market will reveal this over time, rather than a curriculum set out and created by SME’s. Not for lack of confidence in those SME’s, but historically doesn’t seem to play out this way. For example, a “How to win the Internet” playbook written in 1999 would more likely be about Yahoo and GeoCities than it would Amazon or Google. Ultimately, the best models and tactics should have no issue garnering attention. Shining a spotlight preemptively may have a negative impact by adding to the noise. All that said, 5% is admittedly a small amount and maybe worth testing.
This is useful feedback, but we also want to clear up any misconceptions. Your point is well taken that a “how to win the internet” guide written in 1999 would probably be unhelpful. But there are two points to think about here.
First and most importantly: writing strategy material on “how to win” blockchain gaming is not the goal of the bucket of initiatives under education in this proposal. (More on that below.)
Second, this is a 5+ year effort. And, even taking your analogy at face value, I think by 2003 there could’ve been-- and actually were-- guides on how the internet was changing everything and on how to build products and companies of consequence and scale based on this.
But to the first point, business strategy documents are not the primary goal. Rather, there is a great deal of mutual education that needs to happen between blockchain developers and game developers. And even more education which needs to happen for regulators, for game players, and for large global corporations which control access to so many games and applications on the internet today.
Education is critical. And yes, it will be emergent, you’re right. The plan here is to allocate annual funds to ongoing education in order to embrace exactly that.
Nobody should be setting out a rigid 5-year agenda on education for the space today. Certainly the early members of Game7 have no intention of doing that. But we do intend to create educational and informative content as a public work. To share those very same emergent best practices you mention broadly, to accelerate learning as much as possible for everyone who is interested in making and participating in blockchain games.
You’re right that there is no playbook today -but as good plays emerge on the field, it’ll be invaluable to have resources to write them down, analyze them, and help others understand what occurred. Over time, that’s how good playbooks will be built.
We want to partner with the best thinkers and analysts in blockchain and gaming as we develop educational materials, as well as work alongside brilliant developers, designers, and leaders at player collectives.
We actually believe education is one of the most critical components of this plan. Yes, we could strike the educational component entirely, or reduce it, and the whole thing would still work. But education can help everyone interested in the space learn more, and learn faster.
All of us with experience building things know how valuable it is to be able to learn faster. We are creating a flywheel to facilitate as much learning as possible, as quickly as possible, and this effort is dependent on observing what’s happening, onboarding builders, and working with industry leaders and passionate people with great ideas.
This isn’t necessarily just developer- or designer-facing material, and certainly not just business-facing material. There is a lot of education needed for players too, not just how to get involved with blockchains but really, how to think about true ownership and property rights. As this space evolves, we think there will be many kinds of player collectives. We think many player-run small businesses will emerge (some of which will turn into BIG businesses), and we think player-oriented and creator-oriented educational content will help foster a bigger, better, more vibrant economy in blockchains games.
We think the well is very deep when it comes to what game developers need to learn about blockchain technology, and about token economics. We think there’s just as much for blockchain developers to learn about game design, community management, user acquisition, live operations, and working with global, truly mass market services with very high end user expectations of experience.
Game developers today have very little idea how blockchain security works, how crypto markets work in various markets, how regulations do and do not apply in various jurisdictions. Few blockchain developers have dealt with the scale of global live services that are routine for game developers, let alone have a lot of experience in making applications that are truly fun and joyous to use. This is what game developers do every day.
These two groups need to learn from each other and the more they do the better off the whole space will be. We also think there’s a lot to be done to help players explore and educate themselves on this emerging new space over time. And then there are institutional actors, from governmental authorities to global corporations with incredible degrees of power and control over new technology landscapes, and we need to educate them where we can, for the good of the industry.
I hope you can agree that this educational component of the plan is perhaps more important and impactful than it might have appeared on the surface. Any lack of clarity is our fault for not being clear enough in our initial write-up.
In short, we are open to reducing the 5% education allocation, but we feel strongly it’s going to be extremely high leverage and very beneficial for the ecosystem as a whole. We really want to emphasize that this is an ongoing, multi-year effort that expands education in many facets of building, playing, and creating meaning around blockchain and games. This is not a one shot master class of some kind that would, you’re right, surely prove to be premature at this very early stage.
Regarding the Investment:
On the Investment allocation, I have two questions:
- Why is $500 million the right number? Not from BitDAO’s perspective, but from Game7’s. Why not more? or less? Curious to know the thought process and maybe some data points for arriving at that figure. For example, is there a pipeline of A+ gaming teams that are fundraising and not getting funded (and therefore a funding gap that Game7 will fill)? Given the capital flowing into the space today, this would be a surprisingly large oversight by the market.
- Why does the $500 million need to be committed today? Again, not from BitDAO’s POV but from Game7’s. For example, why not progressively raise the money? Wouldn’t that be a more effective way to diversify community participation and build credibility & quality partnership over the long-term for Game7? Same as my previous question, asking out of curiosity on the thought process and not with any pre-judgment.
$500M is not the right number. 
But it is a good place to start.
Game7 should be much larger over time. It seems very obvious that blockchain gaming will be a multi-trillion dollar industry. More importantly, it has the potential to materially impact and improve the lives of many people around the world. Roughly 3 billion people across the globe play games today. Blockchains allow people to have true property rights for digital goods for the first time in history. Bringing property rights and new creative and economic opportunities to the ~3B people around the world that play games today is an awe-inspiring and incredibly exciting endeavor for everyone thinking about and working in this space.
If there are trillions of dollars of opportunity here, the potential to increase economic access, and create new opportunities for billions of people around the world, surely it makes sense to deploy billions of dollars into this space over time.
But we can’t boil the ocean. $100M a year for 5 years is sizable relative to what’s been done in the space before, and we hope you’ll agree. And $500M in aggregate over 5 years will certainly help pull the future forward more quickly. We think it’d be premature to allocate more than this today. But we do hope that Game7 can grow over time. We hope it becomes an ecosystem-aligned platform to deploy perhaps billions of dollars a year and benefit all its stakeholders and the entire blockchain gaming community over years to come. We think it’s possible to get there and will work every single day to make it so.
So, to your second question, $100M/yr (in practical terms, it’s more accurate to think about it this way than “$500M”) is enough to get off the ground and provide confidence in having a real impact for the ecosystem, sooner rather than later. To your question about progressively getting more capital committed over time, that’s exactly what Game7 will strive to do! This is just the beginning.
Thank you John, for your engagement with this proposal, your thoughtful comments and for providing the context that you did about your history. We are grateful for your support and your good wishes.
Hi Neil, I wanted to thank you for this post and your fantastic post above. Your experience and depth of context provided was profound and individuals like you are exactly who we hoped to engage when we posted this proposal! 
I don’t think that the emphasis in “Investment” should be overweight towards games per se (which is how the proposal reads) vs. generally deployed by merit across the categories of Content, Distribution, Infrastructure Tools & Services.
Thank you for highlighting this as it was not how we intended it to read. We have modified it to more closely align with your suggestions as we believe they are spot on!
Thanks @RonenKirsh - appreciate the response! Definitely helped to clarify the proposal in my mind. Looking forward to more feedback and discussion from the BitDAO community.
Hi Jimmie, just realized I didn’t update you! This language has been added to the proposal with some slight adjustments.
To balance governance and efficiency, the BitDAO representative(s) will help decide non-major decisions (e.g., establishing strategic partnerships). In contrast, any decision that involves significant transfer of voting rights or capital that exceeds a certain threshold should be presented to the BitDAO community via soft proposals and decided through a BitDAO snapshot vote.
The above process will be used in the following cases:
- Onboarding of Community Partners above a certain threshold of voting rights: >10%
- Investments over a certain threshold of capital: >$10M (unless the BitDAO representative(s) deem that this would significantly hinder or negatively impact Game7).
- Transference of voting rights among Community Partners (all partners including Forte) >10%
This process will be terminated once no single Game7 partner holds > 40% Voting Rights.
As you can see the adopted language you provided was used nearly verbatim with two slight modifications.
An exception on investments over $10M, but only in circumstances where it would negatively impact Game7 in doing so. I do not foresee this exception being used often, but there is a non zero chance that widely publicizing a funding request for an investment, partnership etc. could materially harm the success of that investment or partnership.
This process will be terminated once every partner holds less than 40% Voting Rights. We believe that these “training wheels” allow BitDAO to have more initial control during the bootstrapping phase, but once a sufficient percentage of Voting Power has been re-allocated, these provisions should be removed to prevent continued active engagement from BitDAO in Game7 operations. Additional funding requests after the initial $80M would still be discussed and voted on by BitDAO. I believe that this is very much in line with the spirit of the BitDAO whitepaper as referenced by several others above.
Find ways to avoid micro-decisions from being bottlenecked by the top-level BitDAO governance process. Limit BitDAO governance to mandate and funding approval. Allow partners to be autonomous.
Really appreciate your feedback and I honestly have to say that it is so cool participating in an initiative that is driven by the community. A month ago I was just another person reading through the BitDAO docs that sparked a few ideas and here we are discussing governance clauses, absolutely incredible. As an aside, would love to discuss with you directly on Discord if you’re a member there! I have a few other proposals I am working on and would love additional insight. That goes for anyone reading this as well, would love to have more active communication happening in Discord!
Hey all!
Wanted to add my support of the Game7 initiative as well.
I’m CTO and Co-founder of OPGames, and we firmly believe in bridging game developers to web3. @jefftunn is correct that there is still significant education that we need to do, and Game7 grants and education program would go a long way in accelerating the adoption and understanding of game developers and allow us to grow the space. We need more developers like @ncyoung to steward new builders and creators and help them understand what they’re missing by not building on web3.
For OPGames how we’re trying to do it is by reaching out to independent game developers and educating them about web3, giving them the tools to create their own NFT sales for example. We are also funding open-source engines, and organizing game jams and hackathons with communities like Gitcoin and js13kgames.
There’s still a lot to do though, and I believe altruistic, unbiased movements like Game7 will massively accelerate this platform transition. OPGames would love to be involved!
Personally I’ve also done some writing on blockchain games, digital item ownership, and web3 as a whole. Some of them can be found here:
https://kernel.community/track-gaming
Can reach out to me on twitter also at https://twitter.com/polats for any questions!
With respect to your points- I’m a university student, and I can tell you right now that institutes of higher-education absolutely need incentives to start innovating here. A lot of academics are being lead by publicly-funded projects that cut this space out entirely. I see funding supportive academics as a hugely +EV play- particularly if there are developed partnerships.
Thank you for your interest in being part of Game7.
OP Games has done a phenomenal job educating game developers over the past few years, and it’s clear that you and your team truly care about pushing the space forward.
Speaking on behalf of myself and the Forte team, we think OP Games should be a Community Member of Game7 to make it a success.
Would there be any interest in working with public institutions? I’m really just asking out of curiosity here. One way or another- I appreciate your efforts towards cultivating the space.
Thank you @RonenKirsh ! We’d be honored to join, and looking forward to helping where we can.
100%, would love to chat about specifics if you have any in mind.
We are excited to announce the initial batch of proposed Community Partners for Phase 1! We were blown away by the quality and quantity of individuals and companies that reached out to participate in Game7.
In the document below, we propose a list of potential candidates who have expressed interest in joining Game7 as Community Partners should the proposal pass. We compiled the list from both the signup form included on Game7.io as well as through direct conversations we have had over the past week. We followed the selection criteria previously defined in order to highlight potential partners who show genuine interest and a clear plan for providing value in the early creation of Game7.
Keep in mind this is just a proposed list of candidates. The final list of Community Partner selection will be done transparently if the proposal is approved by the BitDAO community. Specific Ownership and Voting Rights for these Community Partners will be based on engagement and value provided to Game7 during the first several months of operation.
We welcome feedback on the proposed list of candidates, additional interest in partaking as a community member, and suggestions on how to objectively choose the initial set of Community Partners in an efficient way. See more on the Initial Community Partners here!
Considering the level of interest in the Game7 soft proposal and the active discussions in the comments, this thread has been converted to a BItDAO Improvement Proposal (BIP) and posted to the BitDAO Snapshot for vote. We now ask all BitDAO community delegates to cast their votes on BIP-5:
Thanks again to the authors for their preparation and for moving quickly to respond to questions and comments from the BIT community.
If successful, who are going to be assigned to execute the proposal? BitDAO has own development team to carry out the technical matters in accordance with successful proposals?
BIP-5 has passed!
Game7 will be established by a diverse group of gaming and technology industry veterans, and will help create a future where blockchain and gaming unites!
Game7 will accelerate the adoption of blockchain technology within the gaming industry by establishing a $100M grants program and investing in blockchain gaming initiatives.
$500M in total funding will be seeded by BitDAO and Forte to Game7 over a period of 5 years. contributors, including the BitDAO community, will work together to ensure organizational goals are achieved, and that economic incentives remain aligned over the long term. Gaming is a $180B industry ripe for transformation, and Game7 will be a major participant and contributor to the industry in the years to come.
Visit game7.io to get involved today.
