Tokenomic: Quick look into Elpis DAO (Part 3)
In this article, we want to take a closer look at how a governance token can influence the development process of a GameFi project, and how the gaming industry may transform in the future.
In the previous parts, we briefly introduced some utilities that are being built for EBA governance tokens. In this article, we want to take a closer look at how a governance token can influence the development process of a GameFi project, and how the gaming industry may transform in the future.
The concept of “Metagame” in the traditional gaming industry
Metagame is a common concept in traditional video games. Metagame is normally used to describe games that require players to find out the best strategy to get the highest performance.
There are several examples in the traditional gaming industry, such as Dota2, League of Legend, especially in card games namely Gwent, HearthStone, or even in sports games like Pro Evolution Soccer. In Age of Empire, StarCraft, or Counter Strike - games that are well-known with highly balanced gameplay design, meta concepts still exist.
Although developers are constantly trying to balance their gameplay, there are always strategies that perform better than others. Even when they try to create new features and improve the mechanics of their game to fix the imbalance or keep satisfying players, the problem of balancing gameplay is always turning back. Since every game is a complete ecosystem, any small change can create a butterfly effect.
Normally, this issue doesn’t matter in traditional games, because opportunities are divided equally among all players in free-to-play games. However, the narrative is totally different when it comes to play-to-earn games.
When Gaming correlates tightly with Finance
In the GameFi sector, the players have to pay for the ownership of game assets, before joining the game.
For games that are geared towards diverse gameplay like Elpis, we always encourage players to get into the game characters of NFT Heroes they're going to buy, not just in the financial aspect. The statistics of each NFT Heroes are set randomly, so there exist some powerful Heroes alongside bad combinations. Players who can find good combinations will have a higher win rate and earn more rewards than other players.
Nevertheless, what is a good combination? The answer may depend on the gameplay set by the development team. Any change, even with the intention of improving the balance of the gameplay, can directly affect the benefits of users who put money into the game.
The meaning of the metagame is always dependent on the game’s creators. How community can affect to Metagame?
Up to now, DAO seems to be the best solution for this problem.
Elpis DAO - The true GameFi DAO
“No one uses EBA to trade in the Elpis world, because those green stones are worth far beyond compare. They carry dynamic energies that can be used to control and change the reality of this world” - Elf Elder.
The governance right of EBA holders (*) involves more than making decisions related to the expansion of the Elpis ecosystem and Treasury Fund. We would also facilitate EBA holders to produce a positive influence on the balancing gameplay design process.
(*) Users need to stake EBA with lock time to receive xEBA - voting token.
After giving careful consideration to this matter, we think it's possible to allow EBA holders to take part in gameplay design.
In particular, we divide EBA holders into 2 main groups.
The one that only buys and holds EBA
The one who holds EBA and plays Elpis Battle
For Group (2), they might be really excited to take part in the process of completing the gameplay and writing a new chapter in which they are the winners. From our perspective, we think that makes sense, as they are not only players and investors but also the most dedicated supporters of Elpis Battle.
In terms of Group (1), since they're not in the game so it's harder for them to understand the game's design principles. Even so, they surely would not intentionally use their voting right to make bad impacts on the gameplay. If players leave, they will directly suffer the consequences as investors in the project. However, it’s kind of hard for them to know what's best for all players.
To solve that problem, there are interesting concept that we will build in - The Council.
Voting Council
At the voting round, EBA holders are free to delegate their votes to suitable representatives.
Any user can nominate himself/herself as a representative, and approach the power of authorized votes. In return, these representatives will need to pay an optional bonus to the holders who have delegated their votes. We believe that big representatives like Gaming Guilds will accept to shell out some rewards to take short-term voting rights and create some advantage in the gameplay for themselves.
Thus, EBA holders can still take benefits from the governance feature, even if they don’t directly involve in the game.
The Council will be established at the same time as the Governance feature is being developed.
Conclusion
GameFi is a new market niche, so there exist a lot of aspects waiting to be explored and improved.
Besides, with an intense passion and expectancy for blockchain technology, we believe that DAO will have a profound impact on the current game industry. The governance feature is just one of many experimental ideas that the Elpis team wants to implement. We look forward to having the passionate participants of the community on the journey of exploring these experiments, creating a play-to-earn game truly built by the community and for the community.
Join our community:
Discord: https://discord.gg/elpisbattle
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ElpisBattle
Telegram Group: https://t.me/elpisbattle_official
Forum: https://forum.elpis.game