Five days ago @ragnarok.game dropped some bombshells on us explaining some of the details how everything was going to work. It was on that day that I started to explain the rules to my girlfriend... and she cut me off (can you believe that?!) and said:
So you're going to be playing Cones of Dunshire then?
LOL... TOO REAL!
Thanks for that, babe.
https://peakd.com/hive-131619/@ragnarok.game/ragnarok-game-design-document
Since then I've been paying attention very closely.
I make it no secret that I'm pretty excited about the game and I think it has some really cool mechanics. The shield against Sybil attack is strong. The entry fee is high. The prize pool is large. Only the top 100 players win prizes, and many of those prizes are only acquired once a year, making the carrot at the end of the stick massive, which should attract diehard gamers to Hive.
However, there is some dissension in the ranks!
https://peakd.com/@aussieninja/re-edicted-r541tm
Ah... exactly how many opponents do you think you're going to have with a technically hard game to master, 40 minute play time, no bots and a $100 yearly fee?
I actually do wonder how many players will stick around a couple of months after launch anyway, just because of the complexity of it... I guess we'll have to see how fun it is. I'm personally pumped, but I just can't imagine it'll have a huge market.
EVERYTHING IS FOR YOU! AND THIS ONE THING, IS FOR HIM!
haha
Do you know a wishing-well kid?
I do.
In any case, it has already been stated that Ragarok is an elite spectator sport that isn't going to have a lot of players to begin with. Do the math, if only the top 100 players are part of the prize pool, then we would only expect 1000-2000 active players total. The same logic applies to a poker tournament. Only the top 10% of the players are going to make it to the money. Thems the rules.
Demographics
So who is this game for? Sure, the Hive community owns it. The airdrop is 100% going to the Hive community, but the game itself wasn't actually built for the Hive community. That's just the opening fair distribution. The game actually exists to serve hardcore/professional gamers.
A tournament that lasts an entire year is no joke. The grind is real. It's going to take real skill and determination to win this thing. It's also going to take a lot of risk and a lot of time and discipline. Let's be honest. That doesn't sound like the Hive community to me. This thing appeals to a small subset of gamers by design.
Meet: Ben Wyatt
Ben is the ultimate nerd architype. Remember when Game of Thrones was still cool? Ben was there. Remember when everyone wanted to have their own bachelor party but all Ben wanted to do was play Settlers of Catan? Boy were they annoyed.
but I just can’t imagine it’ll have a huge market.
Yeah, exactly. That's the entire point.
It's not supposed to have a huge market.
Just look at the world that the game takes place in. Hardcore Norse Mythology? Hardcore themes of sex, violence, and taboo combinations of the two during the middle of the apocalypse? Right off the bat, the game isn't supposed to appeal to a wide audience. Loki shapeshifts into a female horse, gets fucked by another horse and impregnated by it, and then gives birth to Odin's faithful steed: the eight-legged legend Sleipnir. How's that for a bedtime story?
Oh that God of Mischief!
What a little raskel!
Getting major Diablo 1 vibes.
D1 was dark and gritty and awesome, and every game that came out after that was more candy colored bullshit designed to appeal to a wider audience. More users, more money. Right?
Well this game is going back to the roots. This game is probably not for you. The potential themes of bestiality and/or incest and just generally fucked up shit are probably going to be a bit much. Norse Mythology is insane, and I've only really scratched the surface in terms of my own personal knowledge of the topic. What did we expect in a culture who's primary strategy of wealth-building was raping and pillaging the world?
So back to Ben Wyatt
Ben needed another game; a better game. Settlers of Catan was too much RNG for Ben. He needed something complex and interesting. So he made his own game: Cones of Dunshire.
Now, the rules for Cones of Dunshire are purposefully absurd and complicated, but really it's the perfect example and analogy of what's going on here. Ragnarok isn't meant to appeal to a wide audience, except for the massive prize pool at the end of the rainbow. Who will succeed in ascending to the top of the ladder?
Looks like someone's out of resource gems!
Muhahaha!
Again, the honeypot for this game is going to be massive.
Think about it:
- Who owns the game?
- Hive!
- Who profits from the game?
- Hive and the winners of the grand yearly tournament.
- How big is a prize pool that takes a year to stack?
- Pretty big.
- How much value will the #1 player scoop?
- If it's anything like poker, a ton
- Sometimes 25% of the prize pool.
- If it's anything like poker, a ton
- How much skill is involved in this touranment?
- Chess and CCG and Poker... a ton.
- Also there will be a good amount of luck to incentivize everyone into throwing their hat into the ring to get a piece of that massive prize pool.
Taking a look at the "competition".
Well, technically there is no competition. This is going to be the first real WEB3 game ever with big prize pools and a lot of competitive strategy. Hive allows this to function through the zero-fee infrastructure. But taking a look at Twitch, what do we see? A Web2 platform where users depend on tips to make their money.
You do not own your account on Twitch.
Twitch streamers are a product of Twitch. If you're a girl and you have a wardrobe malfunction, you are banned. You lose your account and all your followers. If you say something racist: you're banned. If you do anything Twitch doesn't like: you're banned.
Gee, that doesn't seem like a very secure environment for professionals, does it? Zero job-security.
Outside of Twitch, what do we see? We see that the only way to be a professional gamer is not only to be the best in the world (top 0.000001%) but also you must find a sponsor that will pay you, because those rinky-dink prize pools for winning are garbage, and you might not even win it (likely). Crypto is going to change everything, and no one even realizes it.
What do you think will happen when these pro-gamers on Twitch and the like realize they can come to Hive and actually own their account? They can actually provably own a piece of the games they play. They can actually mint NFT skins that they designed and then sell them to other players. Oh man... you aint seen nothin yet. It's gonna get crazy around here, and Ragnarok is only a tiny tiny sliver of that action.
There will be hundreds of games built here that draws gamers away from all the centralized bullshit available today. Again, there is no competition. Dan hired over a dozen employees to make Ragnarok and he's giving it away for "free". Of course the profit will be in the airdrop he gives to himself and the value it brings to everyone on the Hive network. This, quite simply, is a business model that the legacy systems could never hope to copy in their wildest dreams. The dinosaurs think they rule the world even after the comet hits. They can't see the writing on the wall.
Conclusion
Again, a couple thousand super serious players: that is all Ragnarok needs in order to function. This is not a traditional business model that requires millions of users to sign up. This game is deflationary by nature in every sense. I suggest you hold on to those NFT gods you get airdropped for at least a year or three.
Of course with 3M-33M NFTs being airdroped, and only 10 required to build a deck, it is still quite unclear exactly how many players we are going to actually have. Perhaps the casual version of the game will be free to play (aka don't have to spent HBD to heal every game and don't generate XP tokens). Whatever the case my be, the total number of players this game can host is clearly hard capped at some number. This is a feature, not a bug. We aren't aiming for quantity here, this is a quality-control issue. After this game I'm sure other ones that are more palatable to a wider audience will appear. Don't you worry: you'll get your pound of flesh.
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Return from Ragnarok Cones of Dunshire: Focus-Fire Demographics to edicted's Web3 Blog
