State of MetaGame, Season 11, 12 & Beyond!

peth · 22 June 2023 01:19

WTF is MetaGame?

After our discussion at The Seasoning, I’ve decided to retry distilling MetaGame into a single sentence, then impregnated GPT with MetaGame’s info & married our babies. I know it sounds crazy but bear with me here!

Short version:
MetaGame is a coordination game helping individuals see the bigger picture, acquire knowledge, join or/& build DAOs, eventually evolving into a decentralized socioeconomic ecosystem optimized for human and ecological flourishing.
MetaGame is leveling playing fields & building fairer games of life.

Longer version:
MetaGame is a Massive Online Coordination Game (MOCG), an onboarding platform & a decentralized factory that’s aggregating people, projects, resources & context. Our ultimate goal is to construct a new socioeconomic system optimized for human and ecological flourishing, a new game of life empowering individuals to shape their own & collective destinies while co-creating a more regenerative & omni-win economies.

MetaGame was always:

“A Massive Online Coordination Game”
“A Decentralized Factory” that turns into a “Web of Life”

In more understandable language:

Start by serving the DAO space
Expand into Regen space then Web3 in general
Expand into other high-leverage tech (eg. AI)
Tech moves into the background, as infrastructure & tooling for solving IRL problems
Onboard more physical guilds, look towards game b & metamodernism for guidance
MetaGame generalizes into a platform for solving whatever problem; “helping people level up, find others & make a positive impact”, “helping people find the most optimal ways to play life”
MetaGame becomes a decentralized society with physical locations etc.

Definition from the wiki:

“Metagame is any approach to a game that transcends or operates outside of the prescribed rules of the game, uses external factors to affect the game, or goes beyond the supposed limits or environment set by the game.”

In the gaming community, META = Most Effective Tactics Available.

(currently) built for:

DAO-curious newcomers
DAO contributors
DAOs

< ──────⋅◈⋅────── >

MetaGame is an idea whose time has come.

Since we started MetaGame:

The DAO ecosystem went from ~3 active DAOs to hundreds
Regenerative ecosystem went from inexistent to popular
The idea of decentralized societies went from crazy to normal (because ”Network States”)
“Game B” & “metacrisis” went from being completely foreign concepts in Web3 to being known

Tl;dr, MetaGame is an idea whose time has come.

⋘ ────────────── ∗ ⋅◈⋅ ∗ ────────────── ⋙

Where is MetaGame & What’s Next?

MetaGame is unfortunately still mainly on discord, actually
But that sad truth aside, the platform has been cooking up in the background & is almost ready to be served.
Also, there isn’t just “the platform” but a bit more to MetaGame…
Let’s break it down.

< ──────⋅◈⋅────── >

Failure & Success

Where we failed:

These things weren’t properly communicated & made clear
We haven’t delivered on the technical aspects of the idea
We didn’t have an MVP defined & prioritized a misfit product
We never created relevant DAO content (beyond the intro post & podcasts)

Where we succeeded:

Built a strong community that doesn’t seem to give up
Built up a fairly big subscribers list
Shipped a decently listened-to podcast
Built a platform that has most of basic functionality needed (held back by a load of UX issues)

< ──────⋅◈⋅────── >

Community

Community has always been the strongest aspect of MetaGame & its self-evident because we’re still standing strong after 3 years of slouching towards the unholy “product-market fit” - resulting in our token standing ~30% below the launch price 3 years ago. This is another -50% below what was already a wage that couldn’t support anyone living in developed countries.

Truth be told, its been a lot quieter around discord but a) the core community is still here & b) there’s a whole network of lurkers, respectoors, lovers & alumni of MetaGame ready to step out of the woodworks for clear signs of progress (& actual wages).

In short:
Strong core community that seems absolutely impossible to kill
Big loose network of people ready to jump in when urgently needed or viable
A loose network of service DAOs & projects, for people to hire or onboard into
Organized a virtual conference, a hackathon & 2 MetaFests
Organized literally hundreds of community calls
Still, regular community calls with 2 guests & building in public sessions
Incubated multiple projects & one spun out
Monthly workshops & cohorts (S11)
Fix the XP/Seeds system (S11/12)
Migrate DAO stuff to DAOhaus (S12)
Onboard guilds covering all domains of expertise & more regen DAOs (Before Phase II)

Community will be held together by regular community calls, other meetings, activities & IRL events.
It can be strengthened & grown by more people doing personal quests & playbooks in multiplayer mode, as Mochi cohorts.
Same goes for the network of projects, by having DAO cohorts going through the full DAO curriculum over 3 months to improve or start a new DAO - using the course which will be produced at MetaFest.

< ──────⋅◈⋅────── >

Content

Given I started MetaGame as a non-technical person, content has also been one of the strongest points - until a point I got too busy with other stuff.

Some things kept rolling, some slouching but:
Great Houses for all basic fields: DAOs, DeFi, NFTs, dApps & Ethereum
Playbooks for some of the basic stuff
Shipped hundreds of newsletters/podcasts/playbooks/CCrecordings
A regular newsletter
A regular podcast
>12k subscribers on substack & >1.3 on youtube
Playbooks covering everything about DAOs (S11)
Sponsors for the newsletter, podcast & playbooks (S12)
Playbooks covering all basic Web3 areas (S12)
Playbooks covering all basic Web3 areas (Before Phase II)

< ──────⋅◈⋅────── >

Technology

Landing page
The Onboarding Game
Onboarding Paths
Playbooks
MyMeta Profiles
Dashboard
Custom blocks for both
Quests
All of this polished in terms of UX/UI (S11/12)
A subscription system
Bazaar (inverse of Quests; MetaGame, Metagamers & Guilds post tool, service & role offerings) (S12/13)
All of it & more plugged into the dashboard (Before Phase II)

After we have all of these basic pieces in place, I think what we’ll be missing is a matchmaking system & the extension of the Questing system, branching quests off into “personal”, “metagame”, “metaalliance” & “global”.
Rather building quests as a bounties system (the market that already seems saturated & is completely dominated by Dework which is actually a great tool we would really struggle competing with) - I think the play is to make them about whatever - any personal or regenerative project that people might want to play in multiplayer mode or toss some Seeds for others to handle.

< ──────⋅◈⋅────── >

Growth

Since growth usually includes growing all of the above, I will just focus it on as “Growth of Seeds”.
How does all of the above make MetaGame sustainable financially, you ask?
Here’s how…

< ──⋅◈⋅── >

Content

Content side, mainly newsletter & the podcast, already have enough of an audience to become fully self-sustainable. With 12k subscribers, we should easily be able to charge $500 per item, it’s just a matter of putting in effort actually finding sponsors - something I have, admittedly, not committed to.

Towards the end of current season & beginning of S12, content should be fully self-sustainable & possibly finally spun out as “MetaMedia”.

Playbooks have been the only bit lacking - and it will receive a significant output boost from all of the content that will come out of MetaFest + the power of AI to transform recordings, harvest learnings & turn them into Playbooks etc.

Tl;dr
Big enough audience to monetize & become self-sustainable
Actually has sponsors

< ──⋅◈⋅── >

Technology

Although long time & at times lost, in the making - the platform side of MetaGame has come a long way & really isn’t far from being a decent platform. At this point, I think it mainly comes down to ironing out the UX & filling it up with content.

The idea was always that MetaGame was gonna run on a freemium model, where the basic platform & the whole knowledge base is available for free, but the community itself & some of the features are “members-only”.

The platform itself earns through:
MVP of the platform
First members-only feature
A few more members-only features
A significant number of guilds & patrons paying

< ──⋅◈⋅── >

Seeds

So while majority of the projects should eventually find their own sustainability model & the platform itself should be sustainable through memberships - there’s, you know, Seed utility.

Seeds utility?

First of all, the above mentioned membership dues
People boosting quests for visibility
People boosting quests they like, effectively crowdfunding MetaGame’s features
Upvoting Playbooks/paying writers, effectively crowdfunding content
Ad space on the dashboard for free users
Default currency in Quests & the Bazaar
Discount on some services (eg. newsletter & podcast ads)

⋘ ────────────── ∗ ⋅◈⋅ ∗ ────────────── ⋙

Conclusion

I’d say we’re about 80% through Phase I.
It may seem more like 50% by just glancing at the checkboxes, but the checkmarked boxes are condensed years of progress while unchecked boxes are mostly more granular, next steps - checkmarked look back 3 years & unchecked is looking forward 3-6 months.

In fact, I even asked GPT to list the most core components needed for MetaGame & it turns out we already pretty much have all of them - the only piece we’re still missing is DAO infra, which we never planned on doing because DAOhaus.

This has confirmed to me that - not only are we on the right track but we’re actually almost there.

And in case you want to see more history of this AI interaction…

Anyhow, another tl;dr:
Community
Basic platform
Decent content
Much improved platform (S11/12)
Much more content (S11/12)

Both of these things are on the horizon - so what’s next?
Season 12/13!
Self-sustainable content
Many more people using the platform
Semi-sustainable platform
More people betting on the long term sustainability based on current traction & revenue
More fuel for our outputs
…
Self-sustainable platform

The Flywheel slide from the pitch deck captures it best:

At our current burn rate, we’d need:
~ 4 guilds to give us $8k/year
~ 33 guilds to give us $800/year
~ 250 patrons subscribed at $8/mo
Super achievable, no?

Why would people pay tho?

I’ve already told you why they’re gonna pay for the content to get produced - so what about the platform itself? Why should people pay to be a part of MetaGame?

Here’s a few:

All of the above will make MetaGame like 10x more useful in the next 3-6 months
Members-only features are cool & everybody wants to be a part of the community
The value proposition becomes a lot more concrete
Here’s the current value proposition for all 3 user types:

image1608×343 79 KB
All 3 of these user types also have a whole list of more specific perks:

image1242×1247 295 KB

Conclusion of a Conclusion

This is how I see MetaGame’s progress bar:

Phase I >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Phase II
Unsustainable >>>>>>>> Sustainable
Seeds >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Trees
0% 100%

We only got 20% left but its probably going to be the hardest 20%
I hope you’re ready for the challenge

Tl;dr

Bacon · 30 June 2023 16:20

Thank you for doing this as it’s really good to have roadmaps! I’m a little out of the loop at this point but further clarity is always good.

I do think we need even more details and clarity to be honest, for example is there going to be a full roadmap written for each of this categories? Content/Community/Platform? Those would be incredibly helpful, and help give new (or returning people) a clear of idea of what to jump in and get started on.

Also as much as I love the loftier rhetorical and long term goals of MetaGame, it might be time to sideline those and focus on getting a productive system in place.

I personally think the primary goal now (I’m outta the loop so let me know if this is already a thing) is to add in functionality from other DAOs/Organizations to MetaProfiles and the Dashboard. It’s a really cool platform, but currently only works for MetaGame uses. Like when I check it I don’t see much that someone from outside MetaGame would find interesting. We should probably target DAOs with similar systems first and see how ours can complement or replace theirs. This would also give value back to other communities and help bolster reputation. This in turn would bolster community because people would want to stick around for the cred of being part of MetaGame.

Just my two cents I guess. Trying to get back into the game.

peth · 9 July 2023 18:51

Yes! This was definitely one of the issues previously. Previously we had that separate Notion page with just the roadmap, not attached to the actual workflows.
This season, we just started using the new Notion Projects thing to have long term & short term in sync, just switching views from “Projects” to “Tasks”

I think this is a great point, it should probably be a part of the value proposition for guilds on signup but I currently see dashboard & profile integrations as something passive.
It’s possible for others to build custom blocks (meetwithwallet & metokens did it so far) but not something we focus on…

For us, I think the most important 2 things are to iron out the UX (underway by the [UX Squad]
(Proposal #74: UX Squad 0.1: Power Duo), bug fixes, massive simplification & revamp of the design) & add a shitton of good content to this unified page (design WIP)

(note the megamenu simplification aka removal as well)

It’s true that current features only make MetaGame useful for MetaGamers, but currently I’m not sure they’re doing even that - so focus on fixes & useful content is priority.

Other than that, the next thing would be to have a rudimentary matchmaking system for people to do Playbooks in teams, adding “personal” Quest category & building the “products & services” page (basically the opposite of quests, where we can put up things like newsletter ads we offer & everything other guilds or people are offering).

At that point, I would say MetaGame is “complete” & we should focus on building many dashboard & MyMeta blocks.

Tho at that point, there should be a lot more users so more guilds would be self-incentivized to build the custom blocks themselves or pay us to do it (currently only meetwithwallet & metokens did that, but kind of proves the hypothesis)

I’ll personally definitely focus on bridgebuilding as soon as I get the load of new playbooks up (from MetaFest’s DAO Design Track primarily but also a bunch of my own).
Most DAO platforms are focusing on trying to replace DAO’s current tooling or add new & nobody wants more tooling. I think our play here should be to focus on complementing, at least for now.

Focus on the onboarding aspect: you don’t have to do anything, just create a profile, we’ll create an onboarding path, add your news to our newsletter & just start sending people your way.

Then over time, as you mentioned, our dashboard should contain at least notifications & data from all the other tools they’re using to run their DAO.

Bacon · 9 July 2023 21:25

Hmm, I think there’s a pretty big problem/misalignment here, notably this notion/premise:

Seems incorrect to me. If we solely focus on content I don’t see us growing the user base in this way. If the primary value of MetaGame is the newsletter/playbooks/podcasts people will consume and interact with those through their usual channels, not the dashboard. Which is fine if that’s the goal, but that won’t really further the core vision of MetaGame and it’s loftier long term goals. In short I don’t see this:

Happening organically. We’re gonna have to make this happen by building out features/samples/systems. We’ll have to build enough to get broad adoption before people will really start doing it themselves.

In terms of specific goals/systems:

This is something we’d need to build, as last I checked we don’t have a universal onboarding system. Rabbithole.gg seems to be doing this much better. We’d have to build something similar to them for appeal beyond MetaGame.

I don’t agree with this:

At all either. As much as I’d like to see these things, and have always loved MetaGame’s excellent design/UI. (Thanks @Dave !) I don’t think polishing what we have is as important as building out more useful features. I don’t particularly view content alone as the solution either.

I mean, tbh you say MetaGame’s time has come but it feels more to me like it’s passed and we need to play catch-up. We kinda failed at setting up a universal onboarding system and DAO tooling, and lost our first mover advantage. We do have a good and talented community with some great content though, and I think with some clear goals and strategies we could still be hugely successful.

Bacon · 9 July 2023 21:42

Oooh this actually looks great! I was looking for something like this back when I was more active, I’ll have to take a deeper dive.

peth · 11 July 2023 10:13

2 answers here:

When I say focus on content, I mean for the next 3-6 months - not indefinitely.
Content has historically been what grew our user base the most.

We now finally have a proper UI for courses (Questchains) & we haven’t shipped a decent playbook in 6+ months. We have about 20 in total, mostly from 2 years ago & very few of them are actually relevant & good.

Playbooks aren’t meant to be consumed - they’re meant to be played/enacted.
As mentioned, we now finally have proper infra from them, where people can actually complete them, submit proofs & get NFTs, rather than just read them.
They will be integrated into the dashboard for people to track progress & they will be able to start quests to invite people to complete playbooks in multiplayer mode using our quests, Mochi &/or Rite of Moloch. (one of which should be more deeply integrated into the UI sooner or later)

If having playbooks covering everything people need for starting a DAO (which we’ll have from MetaFest) & having a UI for completing them + starting quests & guild pages to attract more people to the DAO you’re building isn’t furthering the core vision of MetaGame and it’s loftier long term goals - idk what is

Idk, so far we got a $35k grant from Ceramic to fully integrate it, which also pays for 2 other integrations. Meanwhile, we also had meetwithwallet, meTokens & questchains integrate themselves.
Theory is that bigger projects will give us grants to integrate them & smaller will build integrations themselves. This is already happening & I’m willing to bet you it will be happening a lot more once we have more users. Lens next!

This is not true - last you checked must have been long ass time ago!
We have the onboarding game giving a broad overview & intro to basics, great houses giving a broad overview of the individual domains of web3 & a few playbooks for actually getting started in joining or building DAOs. Guilds are likewise already able to create their own onboarding paths.

Tl;dr all of this already exists - we just need more content & less buggy confusing UX.
Rabbithole may have a lot smoother UX but Rabbithole also raised $21.6M vs our $250k. They raise 100x more money but I definitely wouldn’t say it’s 100x better.
(also different focus - Rabbithole is focused on onboarding users & we are focused on builders)

I don’t think you have enough context to not agree with this at all
It’s not about polishing, its about fixing bugs, making the whole thing more presentable, usable & easier to understand.
As much as I’d like to move on to new features, it’s pointless to build new things until current things are fully usable & the experience of using them is good because we won’t get anywhere.
Here’s the user research that Cami did a few months ago, featuring issues such as “landing page very hard to read on mobile”.

Other than literal bugs, things like simplifying the menu from 16 to 7 items & merging educational pages into a single one will alone take the website to the next level.

But I think that, like in content, our disagreement comes from timeframes.
I don’t think we should “focus on polishing forever”. I think we should focus on UX for the next 3-6 months until things are actually in a good shape, then move on.

While we definitely could have moved much faster & we definitely lost some of the first mover advantage - I think we are still very early. Contrary to what it seems from the inside, the DAO market is still tiny. If you talk to any of the DAO tooling teams, you’ll see they agree. Even Dework, who successfully captured like 90% of the DAO task management/bounty board market agrees…

The space of DAOs that are actually philosophically aligned with MetaGame & aren’t just regular token voting DeFi protocol DAOs is miniscule. Regen space is even smaller while the game b & network state spaces are practically non-existent on the maps.

We are a niche within a niche at the crossroads of a few niche spaces. In some ways we’re running late but in most ways we’re still too early, building for a market that isn’t even really formed yet…

Fully agree with this bit tho! I’m as optimistic as ever & we’re closest we’ve ever been to having a good platform that’s ready to ride the next wave.

Overall, appreciate you challenging my beliefs & making me rethink but I have a lot more context in the current state & have been thinking about these things for months, so its hard to make me shake off some of my conclusions

Looking forward to your next response &/or talking more about all of this at MetaFest!