Expanding the composability of autonomous worlds with plugins

Compiled by Chiny, Scissors, MetaCat

Special thanks to Matt[1], Ben[2], Ronan[3], Shora[4], Rodrigo[5], Remi[6], Daes[7], Lib[8], Rohan[9], Sylve[10], apix[11], Funblocks gang[12], and Jake[13] for reviewing and providing feedback on earlier versions of this article.

01. Current major issues limiting composability

The autonomous world (AW) space is growing steadily.

Game engines like Mud and Dojo have been developed. The number of developers and games is increasing. Even large game studios like CCP Games have started developing fully on-chain games.

Everything seems to be going smoothly.

But there is still a key component missing.

Even though the vision of autonomous worlds is that anyone can develop and extend on top of games, we haven’t seen many plugins developed yet.

I’m relatively new to this space.

A year ago, when some of my friends started developing in the AW space, I thought, “There’s no point in deploying the entire game on-chain; it’s too slow and limited. Who would play this?”

However, the main feature of blockchains — allowing anyone to create and enforce new rules on top of their systems — makes a lot of sense for game worlds. This made me shift my focus from DeFi governance to the AW space.

Entire games exist on-chain, and on top of these worlds, anyone can create new rules and features that depend on them. There’s no distinction between game studios and third-party developers.

When I realized this, it really felt like the path to the “metaverse”.

I also gradually realized that there is a huge gap between this vision and reality at the moment.

Developing a fully on-chain game is extremely difficult and requires a high degree of control from game studios. But the game logic is a playground for players.

If these on-chain worlds don’t scale successfully, I’ll be asking myself the same questions I asked myself a year ago.

What’s the purpose of putting an entire game on-chain?

02. Why aren’t people developing plugins?

Many traditional games like Fortnite and Minecraft have various mods developed by their communities, but why isn’t anyone creating plugins in the AW space? Shouldn’t it be easier to develop plugins for games that are fully on-chain?

The simple answer is that because the AW scene is still in its infancy, there aren’t enough games to attract players. But there are two main reasons beyond that.

First, developing plugins is extremely challenging.

Current full-chain games are still in the exploratory stage. Typically, their source code is not fully open source, the documentation is not perfect, and the game logic changes frequently.

Therefore, every time they make a change, a lot of communication and continuous maintenance with the game studio is required. On top of that, there is no guarantee that the game client will support your plugin (usually it doesn't), so you have to develop a front-end that non-technical players can use.

Yes, even simple plugins require a lot of time and effort.

Secondly, funding is also a big issue.

Ideally, developers are motivated to create plugins simply because they love the game.

However, as mentioned above, this requires a lot of time and effort. If you can't even cover your basic development costs, it becomes very difficult to incentivize the development or continue to run the plugin.

In fact, these issues were also highlighted in a recent conversation with a friend of mine, a game developer who loves AW. He told me that he was interested in collaborating on a plugin, but needed compensation because it would take quite a lot of time and effort.

The obvious source of compensation is the users of the plugin or the game studio itself.

However, this space is still developing, and there are not enough users willing to pay to cover the development costs. In addition, most game companies in AW, which are usually startups, have no revenue, so it is unrealistic to expect them to provide financial support.

Another option is to seek funding.

For example, Starknet recently provided Realms with a $2 million STRK grant, demonstrating their commitment to game development, although not all games are built on Starknet.

In addition, Dark Forest held a plugin competition in 2021[14], which successfully attracted many high-quality plugins.

However, as mentioned earlier, not all games can provide financial support, and there is not enough funding to support all games and projects on the chain.

The business model of plugins is still a big problem.

03. Solution

So, how to create an environment in this space that allows more plugins to be developed?

The first idea that came to my mind was to create a guild focused on developing plugins. However, we face the same problem as before.

Given the current state of full-chain games, developing plugins requires a lot of effort, and developing them one by one takes a lot of time. In addition, the continued development of plugins requires funds. But where does this money come from?

I will set up a guild anyway, but I am also thinking: what if we can establish a mechanism that enables developers to profit from plugins?

The idea is simple - the Grant protocol provides funding for plugin developers

Developers can publish proposals and put forward their ideas for developing plugins, the player community votes on the plugins they want, and the ideas that the community needs most will be funded.

04. Funding

The initial funding will be raised from L2 grants, companies, VCs, and individuals active in the AW space.

Also, the first funding round will be open to any plugin idea, but to make protocols and projects more comfortable with funding, I am also considering future donation options to only fund plugins built on top of their projects.

This funding supports the growth of the ecosystem by incentivizing plugins to be created on top of your protocol, game engine, or game. It helps attract more users and plugin developers, creating a flywheel effect of growth that benefits all projects and ecosystems within the AW space.

As a first experiment, we plan to raise a total of $15,000. Each passed proposal will receive a fixed amount of $5,000, so we will eventually support developers to release 3 new plugins on top of existing games.

In the future, I hope to support plugin development on a larger scale and support more developers, but since there are almost no plugin developers at present, I plan to gradually scale up while cultivating the plugin developer culture and community.

05. Voting Mechanism

As a voting mechanism for the player community to decide which plugin ideas to fund, I consider adopting a competitive voting method.

During the submission stage, anyone with a plugin idea can submit a proposal to participate in the competition. Everyone competes to win by showing their skills and ideas.

When the voting phase begins, the community votes on plugin ideas they would like to see used. If a proposal receives enough votes to be declared the winner (in our first round, the top 3 proposals), the proposer receives funding and can continue developing their plugin.

Similar to Nouns’ Prop House[15] mechanism↓

Ideally, there would be a monthly round, and a fixed schedule would help all-chain gamers develop a habit of checking in on specific dates (such as the 10th of each month) to see new plugins they can use.

Determining the best way to distribute voting rights is very challenging.

At present, I prefer a whitelist approach instead of distributing governance tokens. This allows for flexibility in adjusting whitelist requirements for each round and avoids token-related complexities such as airdrops, whale problems, and price fluctuations.

The idea of ​​a whitelist is to choose a game each round and whitelist accounts based on in-game resources (e.g., holding more than 500 orbs in the SS game, or 2,000 kimberlites in the Primodium game).

By the way, if you love AW and want to get involved, feel free to send me a private message on Twitter[16] or Telegram (@koheingt). Any feedback, ideas or requests for funding agreements are greatly appreciated!

06. The rise of add-on developers

In AW, there are currently 3 types of people: game studios, gamers and game guilds.

But imagine if we could introduce a new type of person: add-on developers.

I think this funding agreement could help achieve this.

It would show how new features and clients can be developed. No longer relying solely on game studios, but through the power of third parties, games can evolve based on the needs and wishes of the player community.

In addition, I have always felt that the market for add-on developers in the current AW space is underestimated, but it holds great potential.

Today's teenagers are not just buying games; many of them have already started making their own independent games on platforms such as Roblox. Statistics[17] show that as of December 2023, there are over 5 million game developers making their own games and earning Robux.

However, when you try to make your own game on Roblox, you’ll find that the games you can make are extremely limited in scale and quality. Until now, only large game studios have been able to develop AAA games.

Autonomous Worlds will change this view. Anyone can expand a game world based on a AAA game without having to obtain permission or worrying that they will ban your plugin at some point in the future.

This democratization of game development will not only attract more people to develop games at a larger scale, but also provide more opportunities to make money.

We need to develop a product that makes it easier for people to build plugins; a product that allows gamers to discover and use plugins; a product that helps developers monetize their plugins (without relying on funding)...

There is still a lot to do to realize the full potential of Modding.

The AW space is still in its very early stages, and now is the best time to shape its future.

Let’s keep trying and exploring!

References

[1]Matt: https://twitter.com/mattvv

[2]Ben: https://twitter.com/BenGiove

[3]Ronan: https://twitter.com/wighawag

[4]Shora: https://twitter.com/0xshora
[5]Rodrigo: https://twitter.com/GaonukRodrigo
[6]Remi: https://twitter.com/remi_gai
[7]Daes: https://twitter.com/0xDaes
[8]Lib: https://twitter.com/lib_defi
[9]Rohan: https://twitter.com/YeomenAI
[10]Sylve: https://twitter.com/sylvechv
[11]apix: https://twitter.com/apixtwts
[12]Funblocks gang: https://twitter.com/0xFunBlocks
[13]Jake: https://twitter.com/proofofjake_
[14]Plugins Contest: https://blog.zkga.me/v5-plugins-contest-winners
[15]Prop House: https://prop.house/0x767a3bdf2aa3b3201b794927a997fcf4e50d4702
[16]Twitter: https://twitter.com/koheingt
[17]Statistics: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1376688/roblox-annual-earning-creators/#:~:text =Roblox%20Corporation%20annual%20number%20of%20creators%20earning%20money%202021%2D2023&text=In%20the%20month%20ending%20December,in%20the%20Developer%20Exchange%20Program.