The Renas, AAA-GameFi and AMA
On 6th of March, William Pucs had an AMA with the THiNG.FUND community. Below is a recap of the AMA. Enjoy!
The Renas Co-creating Infinite Game
What it is and why did you decide to develop it?
Developed by THiNG.FUND, the Renas seeks to build a true Metaverse by providing users with a gamified co-creating tool that makes it possible for everyone (who didn’t acquire any creating skills) to experience and create for an infinite game. In this game world, everyone can generate their characters thanks to the semi-automatic tools provided by game, greatly lowering the threshold for creation. On top of that, your characters will grow, evolve, acquire more attributes or develop a different personality as they explore the game world.
If you are a creator, you can create plugins for the game as Lego blocks. For example, you can add a new character property, say relationship, as a Lego block for other players to pull and plug into their characters. This way, an infinite number of unique characters are created. When players encounter, stories happen. Characters of different properties and personalities may fall in love, have a fight, challenge each other to a duel or simply pass by as strangers. Every encounter adds to the experience of the character, which will affect his/her/its choices later on in the game, thus creating an infinite number of threads of infinite rendezvous.
The idea of the Renas comes from the belief that what makes an IP truly unique and valuable is its characters and the interactions it has with the outside world. Harry Potter is loved for his friendship, love, bravery and many other things that do not reveal themselves until he has interactions with the outside world, be it fighting Voldemort or his enviable friendship with Ron and Hermione. In order to create a valuable IP, PFPs are not enough. We hope to create a social Metaverse where creators can let their imagination run wild, while their characters can meet, talk, have fun or have stories, to empower the Renascence IP. We therefore decided to launch a general-purpose tool of co-creation, that accepts both images and texts, to make it much easier for every one to create characters that keep evolving. When we created the tool, we actually drew a lot of inspiration from my 17 plus years of experience developing for traditional board games. All the algorithms supporting the game have been successfully running since 2004. The idea is to make gameplay as easy as possible, while maximizing the fun and value-creation part. By the way, all the creations will be stored on-chain. They will be creators’ assets. players will enjoy the fun of a roguelike game, featuring an RPG genre adventure, battle and romantic relations etc.
In the Renas Metaverse, we tap into the composibility of the Flow blockchain. Users can create different components, be it characters’ traits, skills or objects, or mini-worlds, plots, mysteries and NPCs. They can enrich the Renas infinite game and inspire other creators.
What is the roadmap?
At the current iteration, users can randomly generate a character, change its name and avatar, add a background story about its past and present, thus begins the adventure. There are several scores that are generated alongside the character, each representing a different capability. Higher perception means you can detect more hidden threats than the person next door. But lower spirit means you may risk getting delusional easier than others. All the numbers are randomly generated. You have to be really lucky to get your desired traits. Indeed you can expel your characters to get rid of the unwanted characters, as every account has only 3 character slots. You have to expel Bob to make room for Alice. What’s more, every time you generate a character, you will have to spend 3 $cps. (Note all the $CPs you have for now are only test points. So spend as much as you have! But your characters will stay.）
In April, we will launch the DAO governance tool with $CP tokenomic. In the meantime, the content editor will be eventually open to all the creators in our community. In other words, they can propose to add more features, such as faction, personality or sexuality, and see them open for composing with the characters if the DAO votes yes. Multi-lingual support will also be realized via community incentive programs.
In May and June, we will focus on the integration of on-chain data, including wallet integration, as well as duels between characters.
As we progress into Q3, characters will be able to set off on an adventure. They may arrive at the wasteland and find themselves in danger. Their perception tells them an enemy is lurking around. But they are too weak to withstand any physical attack. So the only hope is their high movement speed can take them off the scene. But when a female character meets a man, chemistry is in the air. All these are part of the characters’ bio and what makes them unique. None of the experience has to be filled in manually by players themselves. Instead, your behaviors and choices will automatically form the stories for you during the adventure.
All these adventure tools will be open to OGs in Q3 for testing and soon after, to everyone. After that, we will integrate more NFTs that are outside the THiNG.FUND ecosystem. On top of that, you may know we are currently incubating some blockchain games, so we will seek to bring our characters to these games.
In Q4, we will keep adding more complicated gameplay and adventures. There will be more complicated character relations. For example, when you try to recruit a survivor in the wilds and may be rejected because it was expelled by you a long time ago. We will also open the crafting and synthesis of equipment and land operations. We will open APIs for any third party to call and create derivative works based on your creations. Imagine one day when you are playing a game and find the character, or the prop extremely familiar, and suddenly realize this was your creation. Isn’t that exciting? Of course, all the creators will earn passive income from others pulling their works.
How to participate and how can I benefit as an early bird?
We have just wrapped up the internal pre-testing where we invited Amator Artists, faction members, Artists, and whitelisted members to generate characters and give us feedback. (The Renas is now open to all, click https://thing.fund/renas/ to explore）
But the next stage will be more critical, as testers can keep their characters and take them to the formal version. More character slots will be freely unlocked for early birds when newcomers may start with 3 (however, you will still have chances to expand your slots). Better still, you don’t have to spend your own $cp creating characters during the next test stage.
THiNG.FUND Incubated Gamefi
Developed by ex-members of reputable game studios, with a proven track record marked by leading games such as Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, Deus Ex and FIFA, etc, the AAA quality GameFi features different gameplay mechanisms to maintain player engagement for years to come, a carefully designed tokenomics model and Defi mechanisms, with sophisticated asset consumption loops that will ensure the overall economy stays balanced and steadily growing.
As one of the earliest advisors and investors, THiNG.FUND will have in-depth collaboration with the game. Apart from perks for our $CP, NFT and badge holders, our community creators may have access to planting their creations into the game, say, an amulet.
In addition, THiNG.FUND NFT holders may receive addition perks outside the game. As the game progresses, more details will be revealed.
Q&A
1. Will the characters encounter random events during the adventure?
Yes. There will be pre-specified events as well as events added by co-creators. For example, you visit an underground lab where you might encounter two pre-configured zombies. After taking down the zombies, you slip past a door and hear some survivors crying for help. But this doesn’t remain permanently so. Once a creator replaces it with a challenge of equal difficulty, the next time you arrive at the lab, you will find yourself having to deal with a different scenario. Our aim is that every time you visit a dungeon, you will experience something different. In other words, the Renas will be an infinite game Metaverse.
2. Will there be changes to the characters’ features as more scenes are added?
Not necessarily. We have designed the underlying framework since 2004, to make it a general-purpose container that applies to almost every type of RPG game. It took us 10 years to abstract from the complex of features to arrive at the 3 versatile scores: might, agility and spirit. Other properties, such as toughness, endurance, and resistance were related to the three general types of threat. So the framework is highly versatile and has proven its tried-and-true universality.
Therefore, we are currently focusing more on making users’ creations integrated into the Renas game via DAO governance, so that more people can visit and access them.
4. What will happen if I left the game for, say one year?
Your characters will continue to grow, even if you are dormant for a while. They may be interacted by others. For example, they may help others and get some equipment as rewards. Or they may be stabbed by others. They can be expelled by you, but recruited by others. Some day, as you browse the Wilds section, you may find characters with familiar features, but a totally different avatar and story. By reading its on-chain history, you will probably find this was your character a long time ago.
5. Can players team up?
Of course, they can in the future. But we are still thinking about how to realize it based on today’s technical structure and what data format is needed. But teaming-up will not be a current priority as we have many things more important as for co-creating and governance on the plate.
