Out of Scope: Nobody has built the sports metaverse - Harmony team, let's do it!

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About

Hi everyone,

Looks like I’m the first person to be applying for the Harmony Builders & Creatives stream.

I guess it’s best to doxx myself so you guys know more about me (holy crap this is scary!)

Anyways, I’m River, a 10+ year entrepreneur within the UK tech community.

My background is in hackathons, accelerators, and tech.

I started off my career working for a charity helping student entrepreneurs turn their idea into a business.

During this time I also participated in several hackathons for fun, including:

I also organised hackathons as well, the main one at the time being Startup Hacks, which was Europe’s first invite only hackathon. It was at SH where I first learned about Bitcoin!

Through my work I was approached by a really well known entrepreneur, Lee Strafford, to run a startup accelerator in the UK called Dotforge.

Whilst at Dotforge I helped recruit 30 startups onto the programme where they received angel investment, mentorship, and fundraising support.

In 2015 I founded The HackTrain, a hackathon focused on driving forward innovation in the railroad industry. We brought together developers from all around the world to literally hack on a moving train travelling from city to city. The event was so popular I decided to spin it out into a full-time business which we called Hack Partners.

Whilst at HP I led the organisation of 15+ hackathons bringing together 800+ developers from around the world. We ran hackathons all around the world including in France, Germany, and Hong Kong.

Some sponsors included: Bloomberg, the NHS, Microsoft and o2.

The HackTrain, is widely considered to be one of the best hackathons in the world within the hackathon community. We ended up collaborating with major train operating companies such as Deutsche Bahn, SNCF, Network Rail and Hong Kong’s MTR.

I led Hack Partners to generate over £5m in revenue across 5 years and scaled the business to 30-staff. Over the years we achieved quite a lot on a policy and technology level.

As a typical startup CEO I did everything from sales and partnerships to marketing and product management.

I take pride in being a relentless individual that wants to be the change I wish to see in the world. And I firmly believe decentralised video games are going to become one of the most significant moments of change in the 2020s.

Why am I applying for funding?

I have had an idea for a video game in the back of my head for nearly a year now. Inspired by the likes of Axies Infinity, CrytoKitties, Start Atlas, Sorare.

I’d really like to focus on this full-time as I know the idea needs more dedication than just the occasional evening here and there. I want to build some serious momentum and going full-time will allow me to do that.

Can you tell us more about the game right now?

The creator in me desperately wants to yell from the top of my lungs telling everyone what it is. But, the video game industry is heavily heavily secretive. And for good reason, studios can spend years designing a new gameplay mechanic only for it to be stolen by others in a matter of months.

In crypto unique ideas are copied in a matter of days.

It’s part and parcel in the video game industry to keep your lips tight until you’re ready to at least announce you’re building the game and have a lot of it in development already.

That way, if your competitors get wind of what you’re doing, you at least already got a head start.

Sadly, if I shout out about it today, I won’t really be in a position to capitalise on it.

What I can say is that it’ll be related to sports, specifically a sport I’m very familiar with, one that has been underserved for the last 20-years when it comes to video games, and one that has a rich history and hyper-dedicated fan base with healthy amounts of expendible cash.

The game will adopt a Play to Earn to model similar to Axies Infinity where users will have the opportunity to earn tokens, NFTs, and other rewards by contributing to the ecosystem.

I believe NFT sports games have the potential to surpass Axies Infinity in revenue due to the fact it already has a massive existing fanbase who would play the game for fun and not just players wishing to earn income.

Long-term the game will be operated as a full DAO.

So you expect us to fund you without revealing your idea?

It’s a stretch, I understand. If I don’t get through, so be it!

I’m hoping my previous achievements and work ethic make me a good candidate for the ONE to EARN programme =]

What are the results you’re going to deliver?

I’d like to spend the next 4 months getting my heads down and fleshing out this idea in more detail in order to get it ready for development.

Once we’re ready, the the plan is to share what we’re working on with the rest of the world and do a token launch to raise development capital.

By the end of Jan 2022 I’ll have everything in place to begin developing this game and will be able to release the whitepaper etc to the wider public.

I intend to use the funding to:

  • Get a polished website up and running
  • Have example artwork of the game produced
  • Create a promotional video
  • Write a detailed whitepaper
  • Produce a Game Design Document
  • Purchase a few dozen domains (I think this is important to do to avoid scam sites popping up)
  • Either partner with an existing game dev studio or build my own team out
  • Be in a position to launch our own token by the end of Q1 2022

Please note this timeline presumes I start full-time 1st week of October.

A good reference point as to where these funds will help me get to is where Star Atlas currently is.

How much money do you need?

I need 4 months of Salary to be able to focus on the idea full-time, based on the Harmony Productive Hours table, that’d be be: $8,341 x 4 = $33,364

I need an additional $54,500 to pay for:

  • Website Design + Development
  • Branding
  • Example Game Art
  • Domains
  • Promotional Video
  • Whitepaper + Game Doc Design

So in total, I need: $87,864

I’m not sure how this would fit with the Builder & Creatives programme. I don’t need a years worth of salary to get this idea off the ground, so don’t think it’s appropriate to ask for that much for my own time.

But if a portion of the funds could be allocated instead to pay for the above, then that’d be super helpful.

Errr, you look like you’ve already made a lot of money, why are you applying to ONE-to-EARN?

I’m one of the many people who have followed their heart over the years.

I’ve turned down opportunities to make large sums of money because it didn’t align with my values and life goals.

Whilst I believe I’ve made a lot of positive impact in this world, it hasn’t quite reflected synchronously in my bank balance!

Of the little money I have made, I’ve invested it into companies and blockchains I believe in (including Harmony) and thus have very little liquid cash at hand.

Are you going to build anything yourself or are you just going to pay everyone else to do it?

Whilst I do think of myself as a Builder, speaking frankly, I’m the type of person that is good at bringing people together for a common goal, i.e. building teams.

I’ve used this skill to work with talented engineers and designers to build tech over the last 10 years. Whilst I may not have been the person punching keys on Sublime, I was the person creating the product roadmap, dealing with clients, coordinating design + engineering, doing quality checks and marketing.

This type of person is normally seen as a ‘Product Manager’, in the video games industry, they’re known as a ‘Producer’. Given the complexity of the game and the number of people that need to get involved, I do believe the Producer role is critical in ensuring the games development occurs on-time.

Do you have a team?

I have a few former colleagues that have agreed to help with developing the website and branding. Sadly they’re not in a position to work for tokens only, thus would require some payment. They have agreed to do the work at a significantly discounted price.

I have in mind a few people who could help with the video game art and promotional video, but haven’t spoken to them about the opportunity yet.

Game development wise, I’ve began speaking to potential co-founders. I do plan to reach out to a handful of studios too for partnerships, but only once I’ve made some more progress as to make negotiations with them easier.

Again, I am genuinely sorry I’m not able to share more about the exact workings of the game yet. This IS NOT how I normally operate! I promise once we’re in a better position a few months down the line that we’ll be A LOT more transparent and it’ll be one of the gems to come out of the Harmony Ecosystem!

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask below!

Thank you for your time everyone.

EDIT: Just to be clear, I’d be happy to share the idea privately with the Harmony team! =]

EDIT 2: Added an additional question + answer below!

Dude, you’re a hackathon guy, why not just build it at a hackathon and go from there?

Hahaha, that was going to be my first point of call! I had already began to sign up to a few game jams and blockchain hackathons to get the ball rolling. But, I spoke to a few friends that work in the crypto + games space who said that this type of project would get replicated very quickly by other studios as well as crypto folk.

Whilst I’m not really worried about competition in the long-term, what I am acutely aware of is that retail and institutional investors could be exhausted if they hear about 100 sports metaverse games in space of a few weeks. Especially if many of them just turn out to be rug pulls or copycats who are just trying to ride the wave and don’t really care about the long-term opportunity. If this happens, it’ll make it much harder to raise during the public token sale and make our long-term outlook more challenging.

It’s basically what we see happening in the NFT marketplace right now, there’s 100s of Crypto Punks copycats that are just diluting the overall quality of the market and fighting for attention. The lack of originality is beginning to exhaust the investor community and that’s why NFT sales have been steadily going down since Q2.

This type of opportunity, it’s better to be first (i.e. the original like Crypto Punks) and already have a significant head start, than not even have properly started and already have inspired 100+ copycats!

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@Creation Thank you for applying to Harmony’s Ecosystem Fund! Yes, you may be the first that specifically mentioned /create.

The idea is great. We’d like to see what your plan is to execute this plan. Please spend the next few days to create a plan to execute this, with specific timelines/milestones, real candidates of your team (not just skill requirements, but real people with links to their public profile), and how you’re planning to budget for each of the creatives.

We look forward to hearing more from you about your plans. Amazing idea!

Hi @Jacksteroo !

Thank you for the kind words + guidance.

I’ll get working on the plan with milestones with budget right away and share it with you once ready!

Best wishes,

River

Proposal is out of scope. We are looking for feature complete projects. Please try again once you have gained some initial traction with a working product.

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