Acknowledgements: Special thanks to Matt, Ben, Ronan, Shora, Rodrigo, Remi, Daes, Lib, Rohan, Sylve, apix, Funblocks gang, and Jake for their review and feedback on earlier versions of this article.
01. The main problem that limits composability
The metaverse (AW) space is steadily growing. Game engines like Mud and Dojo have been developed, with an increasing number of developers and games. Even large game studios like CCP Games have started developing fully on-chain games. Everything seems to be going smoothly. But there is still a crucial missing component.
While the vision of the metaverse is for anyone to develop and expand upon the game, we haven’t seen many plugins being developed. I was relatively unfamiliar with this field. A year ago, when some of my friends started developing in the AW space, I thought, “Deploying the entire game on-chain doesn’t make sense; it’s too slow and limited. Who would play this?”
However, the key feature of blockchain – allowing anyone to create and enforce new rules on its system – is highly relevant for the gaming world. This made me shift my focus from DeFi governance to the AW space. The whole game exists on-chain, and on top of these worlds, anyone can create new rules and functionalities that depend on them. There is no distinction between game studios and third-party developers. When I realized this, it truly felt like a path to the “metaverse.”
I gradually realized that there is a significant gap between the current vision and reality. Developing a fully on-chain game is extremely challenging and requires a high level of control from game studios. But the game logic is a playground for players. If these on-chain worlds don’t successfully expand, I would ask myself the same question as a year ago. What is the purpose of putting the entire game on-chain?
02. Why aren’t people developing plugins?
Many traditional games like Fortnite and Minecraft have various mods developed by their communities. But why aren’t people creating plugins in the AW space? Shouldn’t fully on-chain games make plugin development easier?
The simple answer is that the AW landscape is still in its nascent stage, with not enough games to attract players. But there are two main reasons beyond this.
Firstly, developing plugins is highly challenging. Current fully on-chain games are still in the exploratory stage. Their source code is often not fully open-source, documentation is incomplete, and game logic frequently changes. As a result, every time they make a change, extensive communication and continuous maintenance with game studios are required. Additionally, there is no guarantee that the game client supports your plugin (usually, it doesn’t), so you have to develop a frontend that non-technical players can use. Yes, even simple plugins require a significant amount of time and effort.
Secondly, funding is also a major issue. Ideally, developers create plugins solely out of love for the game. However, as mentioned earlier, this requires a considerable amount of time and effort. If you can’t even cover your basic development costs, it becomes extremely challenging to incentivize development or sustain running plugins.
In fact, I recently had a conversation with a friend of mine, a game developer who loves AW, which highlighted these issues. He told me that he was interested in collaborating on developing a plugin but would require compensation due to the substantial time and effort involved.
The obvious source of compensation would be the users of the plugins or the game studio itself. However, this field is still developing, and there aren’t enough users willing to pay to cover the development costs. Furthermore, most game companies in the AW space, often startups, have no revenue, so expecting them to provide financial support is unrealistic.
Another option is seeking funding. For example, Starknet recently provided 2 million STRK funding to Realms, demonstrating their commitment to game development, although not all games are built on Starknet. Additionally, Dark Forest held a plugin competition in 2021, successfully attracting many high-quality plugins. However, as mentioned earlier, not all games can provide financial support, and there isn’t enough funding to support all games and on-chain projects. The business model for plugins remains a major issue.
03. The solution
So, how can we create an environment in this field that allows for the development of more plugins? The first idea that came to mind is creating a guild focused on plugin development. However, we would still face the same problems as before.
Given the current state of fully on-chain games, developing plugins requires a significant amount of effort, and developing them one by one would take a considerable amount of time. Additionally, ongoing plugin development requires funding. But where does the money come from?
Nevertheless, I would still establish a guild. But I’m also considering if we can establish a mechanism that allows developers to profit from plugins.
The idea is simple – a grant protocol that provides funding for plugin developers. Developers can submit proposals, presenting their ideas for developing plugins, and the player community will vote for the plugins they want. The most needed ideas will receive funding.
04. Funding the grants
The initial grant funding will be raised from L2 grants, companies, venture capital, and individuals active in the AW space. Additionally, the first round of grants will be open to any plugin ideas. However, to make the protocol and project more comfortable for providing grants, I am also considering future donation options so that only plugins based on their projects can be funded.
This funding supports the development of plugins on your protocol, game engine, or game, contributing to the growth of the ecosystem. It helps attract more users and plugin developers, creating a growth flywheel that benefits all projects and ecosystems within the AW space.
As the first experiment, we plan to raise a total of $15,000. Each approved proposal will receive a fixed amount of $5,000. Therefore, we will ultimately support developers in releasing three new plugins on existing games.
In the future, I hope to support larger-scale plugin development and more developers. However, since there are currently very few plugin developers, I plan to gradually scale up while fostering a culture of plugin development and community.
05. Voting mechanism
As a voting mechanism to determine which plugin ideas will be funded, I am considering adopting a competitive voting approach.
During the submission phase, anyone with plugin ideas can submit proposals to compete. Each person competes by showcasing their skills and ideas. When the voting phase begins, the player community will vote for the plugin ideas they wish to use. If a proposal receives enough votes to be declared a winner (in our first round, the top 3 proposals), the proposer will receive funding and continue developing their plugin.
Similar to Nouns’ Prop House mechanism ↓
[Image: Voting mechanism]
Ideally, there would be a round every month, and a fixed schedule could help AW players develop a habit of checking for new plugins available on a specific date (e.g., the 10th of every month).
[Image: Regular check schedule]
Determining the best allocation method for voting rights is a challenging task. Currently, I am inclined towards using a whitelist approach rather than distributing governance tokens. This would allow for flexible adjustments to the whitelist requirements for each round, avoiding the complexities associated with tokens such as airdrops, whale issues, and price fluctuations.
An idea for a whitelist is to whitelist accounts based on in-game resources for each round (e.g., holding over 500 orbs in the SS game or holding 2000 kimberlite in the Primodium game).
By the way, if you love AW and want to be involved in building, feel free to reach out to me via Twitter or Telegram (@koheingt). Any feedback, ideas, or requests regarding the grant protocol are greatly appreciated!
06. The rise of plugin developers
In the AW space, there are currently three types of people: game studios, game players, and game guilds. But imagine if we could introduce a new role: plugin developers. I believe this grant protocol can help achieve this goal.
It will showcase how new features and client-side development can be done. No longer relying solely on game studios, the game will continuously evolve based on the needs and desires of the player community, powered by third-party developers.
Furthermore, I have always felt that plugin developers are undervalued in the current AW landscape but hold tremendous potential. Today’s teenagers are not just consumers of games; many of them are already creating their own independent games on platforms like Roblox. Statistics show that by December 2023, over 5 million game developers will be creating their own games and earning Robux.
However, when you try to create your own game on Roblox, you will find that the scale and quality of games you can create are extremely limited. So far, usually only large game studios have been able to develop AAA games.
Autonomous Worlds will change this perspective. Anyone can expand the game world based on AAA games without permissions and without worrying that their plugins will be banned in the future.
This democratization of game development not only attracts more people to develop games on a larger scale but also provides more opportunities to make money.
We need to develop a product that makes it easier for people to build plugins, a product that allows game players to discover and use plugins, and a product that helps developers profit from plugins (without relying on grants).
There is still a lot to be done to fully unlock the potential of modding. The AW space is still in its very early stages, and now is the best time to shape its future.
Let’s continue to boldly experiment and explore the path forward!
