MVP Game Mechanics v0.1

[Shpigford]

This discussion is so we can have a central place to talk through game mechanics for the MVP.

Rockburg is a music industry similuation game built around trading cards dynamically generated on the blockchain.

We will have a fixed number of drops for each card type. Once those core cards are generated, no more will be created. Though utlimately the combinations of those cards could be used to create new ones.

Core Card Types

These card types are core to the game. They're used in combination with one another to create new resources.

Musicians

Limit: 10,000

• Role — The core instrument they play
• Skill — How skilled they are with their instrument
• Looks — Better looking musicians attract more fans
• Ego — Volatility stat. Larger ego in a band could mean huge bonus for certain actions...or deterimental outcomes.
• Creativity — Higher creativity results in better songs

Venues

Limit: 2,500

• Location — Useful when putting together a tour
• Cap — How many people can go to the show
• Cover Charge — How expensive is it to get in? Higher level bands can pull of filling a large cap with a high cover charge
• Cleanliness — Affects the number of people at a show
• Reputation — Affects the ability for a band to book a show

Studios

Limit: 1,000

• Reputation — Affects the ability for a band to book studio time
• Lead Time — How long will it take to produce a song

Instruments

Limit: 25,000

• Skill Bonus — When combined with the appropriate musician, it provides a bonus range.

Genres

Limit: 1,000

• Popularity — How much of the population listens to this genre?
• Fan Dedication — How dedicated are the fans? Generally speaking, more obscure genres have more dedicated fans.

Combo Output Cards

These cards are the output of combining core cards.

Bands

Combine multiple musician cards and genre cards to create a band.

Songs

Combine a band card and a studio card to create a song.

Albums

Combine multiple song cards to put out an album.

Tours

Combine an artist with multiple venues to create a tour.

[dgrcode]

I understand economics are left out of the MVP, and the focus is on the collectible side of the game. Is that correct? Even though economics might be out of the MVP, I was thinking about them while reading the post.

Some thoughts:

• It feels to me there are too many venues and studios. I was thinking those would be a scarce resource which people could use to make profit from the bands. However, let's say 10k musicians form around 3k bands, and we have 2.5k studios.

• From guessing the amount of bands, I think 1k genres could be too little, unless a band could be created without a genre.

• Should there be a max and a min amount of musicians to create a band?

• What do you think about adding the concept of awards? Like Grammys, Billboard, etc

• Reputation — Affects the ability for a band to book studio time

  How do you envision the booking of the studios/venues working? It'd be awesome if there was a mechanic in place to actually affect the ability for a band to book studio time. Like people wanting a specific studio because the produced albums are better, so they try to book it and it's actually not possible to use the same card at the same time.
  That's definitely not an MVP feature, but if we want to implement something like that in the future (if it's even possible), we might want to take "reputation" out as property.

[dgrcode]

Something else that just came to mind reading StErMi comments.

Does the musician need to own an instrument in order to join a Band?

I'm thinking that we need a way to ensure that any musician will have at least 1 instrument.

For example, imagine we're generating musicians dynamically, and we end up with too many guitarist. Then we're also generating instruments dynamically and we end up with less guitars than guitarists.

Given the numbers, I guess with 10k musicians we'll get a fairly even distribution of them by roles, and the same applies to instruments. However, I'm not sure if we should leave a mechanic open to change the instrument type. Maybe trading 2 instruments to generate a different one, or burning one instrument to get a new random one of lower quality, or something in that line.

[Shpigford]

I understand economics are left out of the MVP, and the focus is on the collectible side of the game. Is that correct?

That's correct. I think economics at this point add a massive layer of complexity that ultimately delays us actually shipping something.

It feels to me there are too many venues and studios. I was thinking those would be a scarce resource which people could use to make profit from the bands. However, let's say 10k musicians form around 3k bands, and we have 2.5k studios.

So where this gets hairy is, say you've just got a few studios...what if the owners of those studios stop playing the game? You end up with some extreme scarcity.

But then again, I'm not entirely sure how "playing the game" will logistically work. (See "burning" in @StErMi's comment)

Should there be a max and a min amount of musicians to create a band?

Could be genre dependent? So if you want to make a "Barbershop Quartet" genre album...you've got to have 4 vocalists.

What do you think about adding the concept of awards? Like Grammys, Billboard, etc

Love that! Not sure how it'd be implemented. 🙂

I'm thinking that we need a way to ensure that any musician will have at least 1 instrument.

So, musicians I think would be sort of "equipped" with their instrument from the start. The "Instrument" cards are just upgraders/affecters to their skill.

[StErMi]

Have you thought about "lock" and "burn" mechanics?

Bands

We have a lot of Musicians roles (recalling from Discord)

1. Can the band be generated without role and number restrictions? I mean could you create a Band with 5 guitarists? Or does the genre of the Band determine the constraints? For example, a rock band needs a vocalist, a drum, a bass, the main guitarist, and a rhythm guitar?
2. When you form a band, are you an artist "locked"? I think so, you cannot transfer your artist from your wallet to another one or you can't form a new band while his at Band1
3. Will the "genre" card be burned when you generate a Band?
4. Can the band be disbanded? When the band is disbanded will it be burned? We can skip it but maybe we need to "lock" it to being not reused anymore.

Albums

Same thing, will the songs be attributed (the owner of) to an Album? And then you can sell the whole Album. Maybe it could be cool that you can generate "copies" of the Album to sell those ones so the value of the NFT could also be about the number of copies / the serial number of the album (the first album value more than the last copies). We could also create "rare" albums with variant covers or signed by the band.

Ownership

I would also love to explore the attribution of other cards to the NFT itself instead of the wallet. For example, a Song/Album is attributed to the Band and not the wallet. It means that you can't sell the Song/Album but you can sell the Band that owns those songs/albums and increase the Band NFT value itself. When you sell a Band that has not been disbanded you are also transferring all the artists that are composing the band.

Landing

This also opens the door for cool things like landing. It could be possible that I don't own the studio or the Venue or even the Instrument that I need and someone else instead of selling it can "land" it to me for an amount of time and money to allow me to create a Song or an Album while I need it.

[Shpigford]

So, you're exploring all the things that ultimately I'm not sure how feasible they are technically. Especially when you start talking community involvement.

As for the concept of "burning". In my head, no core cards should ever be burnable. Otherwise the game just...ends.

My biggggg question is around usefulness of the game without owning all the necessary cards.

So say you need 5 members. Does that mean you need to buy 5 cards? Or is there a way to use someone else's card? Or if you want to record an album...do you need to own a studio card? Or can you borrow someone else's somehow?

[StErMi]

For the "burn" part I totally get it. If you decide to not release any more cards, we cannot burn them.

So for example, when you generate a Band you just "lock" the musicians (and their instruments) and genre card involved in the process (otherwise you could use the same musicians, genre) to generate other bands or sell them to other users. When a Band disbands you get back the ownership of those (it's more correct to say that you get back the ability to use them).

For the question about "owning" a card yes I think that's a requirement. I think that you have only 2 solutions here:

1. make those cards mintable
2. allow people to "land" them. if you land a card you allow player1 to use it. For example, you need a Venue or a Studio to make a concert/song/album. You borrow the card, pay the landing fee, and after minting the song/album the card returns to the owner. While landed the owner cannot use it. You can't land if the card is "locked" because you are already using it for the Venue event/creating song/creating album. I'm saying that it can be "locked" because maybe creating a song/album and so on has a time value to do that, if not there's no locked status

Otherwise, the market will decide. I own 10 genres and I only need 2 I sell the other 8 but yes, it's a game of balance because as you said people could just not play the game and not land/sell cards but usually if those cards have values ($) and they don't play the game they will sell them.

[Shpigford]

So the idea of landing/locking is actually possible technically speaking? How does that work?

[StErMi]

Well. there's not a real standard as far as I know but smart contracts are really just backend applications that you can do whatever you want with.

NFTs (ER721) are nothing special, they are just an implementation of an Ethereum standard where it says which function your contract needs to implement and what those functions should do, nothing more nothing less.

OpenZeppelin has just created a secure and rock-solid version of an ER721 standard implementation.

If we want to do the landing or locking options of a card we just need to store in a structure of the smart contract that those specific cards are locked/landed and we need to add some checks on the usage function of those cards and revert the transaction if it's locked or landed.

[StErMi]

Game economics

Does the user need any native token (FTM/ETH/MATIC whatever) to mint operations? For example, using a Venue or using the studio or creating an Album and so on?

[Shpigford]

I'd say minting a core card requires a token (such as ETH). I don't think minting new songs/albums should require it, though.

[StErMi]

Card interactions, logic, and requirements

Apart from other mechanics if we want to start with an MVP I need to know which are Card restrictions and interactions logic.

For example:

1. if you want to form a band, does the genre restrict the number and type of Musicians needed? Does the musician need to own an instrument in order to join a Band?
2. If you want to create a Song, what do I need to use the Studios card?
3. If you want to create an Album do I only need to combine songs from the same band?

These are just some of the answers I need in order to start building. @Shpigford I know I'm asking a lot but we should solve these issues (including if each of these Cart is a single Contract or not, but here maybe you need the knowledge of someone that has more expertise in the field to understand the pros and cons)

[Shpigford]

Some of my hesitation is that I don't really fully understand what's technically possible, or what's possible but so complicated to pull off that it's just not worth it.

I ultimately want to optimize for simplicity and community.

The Tunes project is really interesting in this regard. They generated the initial song titles with AI, and now people are generating art and they've just released Song minting as well. Specifically the "remix" option where you can create music for a Tune even if you don't own it could maybe be an interesting mechanism.

https://songs.tunesproject.org/guide

That doesn't really answer your questions, but I think the biggest thing we need to clarify what's reasonable/possible when it comes to using cards between multiple people.

[StErMi]

You can mostly do whatever you want there are not a lot of restrictions so it's more a matter of what you want to achieve and we can try to implement that.