Introduction
Impact Play is a socially oriented play-to-earn guild running on Harmony.
Play-to-earn crypto gaming guilds are organizations composed of investors, gamers, and managers that act as facilitating intermediaries by purchasing in-game items like land and in-game assets in the form of NFTs, then lending them out for hundreds and thousands of players to play, earning yields by using those gaming assets in the respective virtual worlds. It is a proven business model.
We intend to adapt this model so that Impact Play becomes the largest gaming guild for social impact within the Harmony ecosystem, reinforcing Harmony’s image as a socially conscious chain.
The players will come from precarious social backgrounds. We will start by working in Africa, more specifically in Nairobi, Kenya but will expand to other countries and continents as we get more community support (unfortunately, precarity exists in every country). Players are KYCed by our team, local actors such as the Red Cross and traditional community leaders (for example village elders, school teachers, etc.) to ensure that the right audience is targeted. Players will not only play-to-earn and support themselves and their community in the process, but after 3 to 9 months, the best players, those most active in our community, those most in love with web3, will be offered the possibility to attend basic coding courses, starting from scratch. We will work with the numerous coding schools that are supporting at-risk-youth. Examples of programs could include: https://africakidscode.com/ and https://shehacksafrica.org/.
The best players (for example after completing the coding course) could also be invited to attend international conferences such as EthCC or Eth Denver. Other youth will be provided with other opportunities and bounties, which will be determined by the community.
In other words, gaming becomes a hook into the web three space. Contrary to other guilds that seek to maximize profit, Impact Guild has a double bottom-line. The project needs to be sustainable while offering real careers to disenfranchised youth who would otherwise perhaps not become coders.
Advantages for the games
This project also has clear advantages for the games as it gives exposure to Africa, exposure to a young population, many potential players, and, as importantly, a chance to create social impact.
Basic roadmap
- April-May: field visits to ensure the games are tailored to local environments, tech design.
- June-July: tech development.
- August: pilot test. Does the model work? How can we improve it?
- September: presentation in EthSafari!
- October: initiation of the growth phase.
Avatar acquisition
Impact Guild is self-acquiring the necessary avatars to test the model. Future assets will be made available in different ways:
- The majority of the assets will be acquired from new and upcoming Harmony games, maximizing the team’s understanding of the Harmony protocol. We are in discussions with protocols that are still in early stages, and there is a strong interest in ensuring that their games have social impact. This increases the possibility of acquiring avatars at minting prices, or at discount prices.
- In order to scale, organizations and individuals are welcome to contribute to Impact Play. They will be able to either donate, rent or sell their hero’s characters at a reasonable rate. In the case of a donation, and after six months of their contribution, funders will be able to recover their avatars if they are not satisfied with how these are being used.
Governance
Impact Play will follow a model similar to that of other successful projects on Harmony, such as DefiKingdoms and Mars Colony. At the first stage, Impact Play will be run by the core team. As things evolve and once the concept is proven, the community will be able to participate and make decisions at the operational level. For example: what countries should the guild expand to? What training schools should we partner with? What games should we work with?
Impact Play, as it develops, may be tokenised (tbd). However, the current objective (and the objective of this grant) is to prove the model and its economic sustainability.
Revenue model
The income generated by the players will be shared between the players (50%), the players’s community (5%), Impact Play’s online community (10%) and Impact Play (35%). Impact Play will develop plug-ins into the different games, as done by other guilds. Note that avatars/heros (assets) will stay in the hands of the guild, as they are the backbone of the business model.
Impact Play’s income (the 35% of the income generated by the players) will cover technical developments, staff salaries (including staff in the communities), buying new assets, travel to off-the-beaten path communities, dev training and hardware for the communities when necessary. While the Impact Play’s revenue is slightly higher than that of other guilds, this is justified by the field work that the team needs to carry out, as well as developer training for the youth. These costs are not supported by traditional development models.
Potential partners
We are currently in early discussions with high value games of the Harmony ecosystem, as well as community members who hold multiple high-value heroes and avatars. We are also talking to other guilds interested in expanding into the African market, who have expressed an interest in serving as mentors.
Why this concept?
The playing guild industry is a growing self-sustainable industry, and thus a safe space from which to create social impact, without having to depend on other funders. There are many successful guilds. We would be build upon the following models, but adapt them in a way that they have social impact:
- Yield Guild Games (YGG) has, as of 11 February, a USD333 million market cap. At the end of 2021, YGG had 10,000 Axie Infinity Scholars across 10 countries. YGG has raised a total of $28.4M in funding over 5 rounds as of Jan 2022.
- Merit Circle is governed by a DAO, the prominent holding organization of all the subDAOs. The most prominent partnership is with Axie Infinity, and there are plans to work with Illuvium, Hash Rush, and Star Atlas. The project launched in November 2021, but it has been in development since July 2021. It has over 94K followers on Twitter. Merit Circle currently has over 2,700 scholars; they keep 30% of the profit from everything the gamers earn using the in-game assets they lend out, while the gamers can keep the 70%.
- Good Games Guild is a fairly new crypto gaming guild. It recently has over 300 scholars and around 117k followers on Twitter as of 27 feb. Good Games Labs acts as their investment arm and game incubator. Good Games Guild has a DAO for management and governance, and they earn 20% of all the revenue generated from the guild. Good Games Guild has closed its Seed fundraising round in Oct 2021 collecting $1.7 million
However, the number of guilds that truly are focused on social return is not that high. Remember, it’s about providing youth with a future!
Just as other guilds, we would isolate each game in its ecosystem. For example, Axie Infinity has a subDAO within Merit Circle that allows it to hold only Axie assets. This would be for security reasons as if in the case of a hackin one of the games, the assets of other games wouldn’t be affected.
Ask
We would like to request Harmony for USD 50.000 to prove Impact Play’s model, keeping in mind that we have already acquired the avatars. This grant will be used to prove the concept, namely, that playing guilds may create long term social impact in disenfranchised communities.
The funds will be used to develop the platform, set-up the necessary marketing tools and travel and develop relationships in Kenya. We agree to follow Harmony’ proposed steps:
- $10K after launching a feature-complete product on our testnet
- $10K after forming a multisig
- $10K after launching on our mainnet with audit
- $10K after 1K daily active users (with launch video, full PR promotion)
- $10K after 10k daily active users (with a detailed roadmap, governance process)
The team
The team is made-up of a combination of experts in gaming, creative directors, finance managers and international development experts, all familiar with Harmony.
Ed holds a Ph.D. and Master of International Affairs. He is the Founder of Impact Plus. He is an international development expert with +10 years of experience in Africa working on projects financed by USAID, USIP, etc. and has worked in the Sahel for numerous years. He is an active member of the Harmony protocol, and has collaborated with other organizations in the past, such as the Ethereum Foundation and Polygon, reviewing the African crypto landscape, mentoring local start-ups and supporting them in grant applications. He is a football fan and particularly enjoys hiking in the Pyrenees (as well as building Märklin train models).
FP is the founder of Peersyst Technology. Ferran and his team have volunteered to develop the project’s proof of concept at cost.
RM is a Kenyan-born community manager and communications expert working out of Nairobi with over 5-years experience implementing community-led meet-ups, hackathons, etc. She holds a Bachelor of Business. She will serve as a community manager.
AF is a finance expert with ten years of experience in Africa budgeting, variance analysis, reporting, accounting system implementation and capacity building. Her role will be to ensure that all funds are properly spent and accounted for. She has an international background gained in international development, having worked most of her career in Africa. She has extensive international donors’ experience in financial management and regulations: Global Fund, USAID, DoD, DFID, KfW, Dutch government. She currently holds the position of Finance Director with The Geoanalytics Center. Aline enjoys salsa dancing and is an advanced scuba diver. Aline will ensure that the finances are properly managed and the funds accounted for.
MM is an international development expert and a Creative Director with ample expertise in tech for good- She holds an art degree from the Escola Massana from Barcelona and is currently working on several tech for good projects for the World Bank, Mercy Corps, etc. She is also an NFT artist, supporting the access of African artists to the NFT market. MM will develop the DAO’s image, and ensure that all activities are rigorously designed, planned and implemented. She also has expertise organizing
The project also counts with Flu as a close advisor…
