Hi! Fellow Sancties, you’ve probably seen me on the twitters and telegrams once or twice, but most recently this tweet below, and as soon as I tweeted it out, this idea got me thinking, and I just couldn’t stop thinking about it.
This forum thread will tell you:
- What I believe can be done to bring this to life, and why it should be considered seriously.
- What I believe are possible caveats to making this happen (dw, the list is rather short, and mostly depends on how we’d approach the execution)
- The costs regarding such a thing and various modes of financing this as a community
- The longterm benefits of having such a ‘product’ in the Sanctum repertoire
-------------------------------- | I The Idea & The Tweet |------------------------------------------------
It all starts here 
The more I thought about it, the more it really ‘clicked’.
Why wouldn’t Sanctum have it’s own MMO?
Well, I gave it a thought, and decided to write a few musings on the topic.
So, I got to the proverbial whiteboard, in the back of my mind, and decided to list off a few reasons why this would be a GOOD IDEA, why it would be a BAD IDEA, and some miscellaneous stuff on HOW TO MAKE IT WORK.
Ready? Let’s go
-------------------------------- | II The Good Stuff |------------------------------------------------
- MMOs were a funnel into cryptocurrencies, it resonates strongly with the ‘older’ crowd.
Most people have encountered Bitcoin, one way or the other, as a means of sending money when virtual goods were involved where PayPal faltered or was simply not available in one’s country of residence. Granted, Bitcoin cost dollars, if not cents back then, but many had at least heard of cryptocurrencies through the MMORPGs (such as ones I’ve listed in the tweet above). A lot of us have spent time in our formative years in these MMOs, in their forums, and sharpened our creative claws by making content related to those games, shared ‘alpha’, screenshots, and good vibes, with the friends and memories we’ve made.
Sound familiar?
- It’s much cheaper to make something like this now.
Self-explanatory, what once required teams of engineers and lots of electricity, has gotten much cheaper. The technology has advanced since the mid 00s, and the server costs of running an MMO have gone down massively thanks to computing power
- The game would be part of the Sanctum brand, but not a “crypto” game
Just as Sanctum reinvented the wheel with a unique aspect and focus on sustainable tokenomics, a ‘paradigm shift’ of sorts could be done here as well.
Don’t make it a ‘web3’ game.
Don’t integrate anything into it, other than the logo and visuals, that would let your average joe know this has anything to do with cryptocurrency.
Keep it pure, keep it retro, keep it Sanctum branded, but not crypto-oriented.
This makes the logistics much easier to manage, as whoever is helping start this up, wouldn’t have the cryptocurrency overhead projects usually have.
- Bringing Sanctum to people who are not waiting to get onboarded into the casino, dexscreeners, coingeckos, etc.
Self-explanatory. A meeting point of casual people looking for a vibe, and us more initiated ones looking to ‘destress’ for half an hour or hour, at a time, from the trenches. Having a game, like this one, brings brand awareness. It’s ‘on-brand’, but not ‘on-brand’, if you get what I’m saying?
-------------------------------- | III The Bad Stuff |------------------------------------------------
- Takes time and energy to set up and delegate the roles (if we want it 1st party, rather than contracted)
- Costs (we’ll get to this later)
- Requires moderating and input from the core team, at least in the early days, which deters from the main focus and revenue streams.
- Ultimately, could be interpreted as a shift in focus from Solana DeFi, rather than as an extension, which shakes up investor confidence.
-------------------------------- | IV The Costs |------------------------------------------------
I’ll be honest. I have no experience in running a game server of any kind, and my knowledge is that of an armchair psychologist - I just know they’re down a lot from what they probably were 20 years ago.
However, I also know that CREATING an MMO, even with all the tools, programming languages/improvements, and AI generated art and abundance of cheap Fiverr art, would take time and effort.
Therefore, I’ve thought of 3 distinct ‘paths’ that could be taken in executing this;
- The acquisition
- The greenfield investment
- The collab
This is the part I want YOU, the READER, to focus mostly on.
Ready?
[1 The Acquisition]
Simple idea, and the one I vote for. The premise?
There’s a LOT of dead, defunct MMOs.
No, seriously, there really are.
The owners of the IP are (if not defunct or merged/acquired thrice over) most likely doing nothing with it, and would love to make a quick dollar by selling the property rights, if the price is right.
However, one should do some window shopping and find one that has:
- The game code and ideally someone from the original team keen enough to work on it, yet again, as they know it best, and would be incentivised to.
- “Clean” and succinct ownership history and legal matters solved (lest we get sued by someone who ACTUALLY owns the rights to this), this requires finances as well.
- A theme that fits the Sanctum vibe. You don’t want to go for something extremely off-brand and pointless.
The cons of this approach are the fact we’d have to haggle with someone, I assume, and that there’s a LOT due diligence that needs to be done, as a community initiative.
However, the advantages are numerous - the hard work is done for us, we get to pick the ones WE want, as opposed to having to build something, and most importantly, it can be done VERY QUICKLY: as soon as property rights are secured and the skeleton crew financed.
[2 The greenfield investment]
We hire someone to create something, in-house, from the ground up. IP rights Sanctum owned, total control from start to finish.
Pros:
- Can be financed in steps/phases, with deferred payments if workers are willing.
- Can be financed via a mmoSOL or something similar, so it doesn’t cost too much
- Much more creative control over the tech stack used in the game, can use existing ‘manpower’ and hire Sanctum aligned and Solana adjacent folks who are talented and most likely have experience in projects like these
Cons:
- Costly
- Takes the longest of all options, which means it could take months if not years for something ‘playable’, by which time interest wanes.
- Principal/Agent problem (google it; but I guess this applies for most things where you get someone to do something for you)
[3 The collab]
Find an existing, functional, relatively alive MMO(RPG), and co-brand it with Sanctum.
Pros:
- Relatively easy to set up once other party is interested
- Cheapest of all options
Cons:
- Not as strong of an effect as having own brand, seems like stopgap measure, hard to window shop like with option #1
- Next to no IP rights, no longevity
- Can be tricky to associate own brand with another (on both ends; example: $CLOUD craters, people got funneled, expected free money, disappointed. Example #2: our partner ends up in some scandal, reflects badly on us)
-------------------------------- | V mmoSOL? |------------------------------------------------
Obviously, in a world of permissionless LSTs, it would be a missed opportunity to not use this (especially with such a catchy name).
Idea is simple:
- APR diverted towards a community fund which would pay for the bootstrapping of the MMO operations and also for the selection and payment of those executing the aforementioned strategies, to Sanctum’s benefit.
Its contributions could perhaps be matched by funds from the team, or from other partners in the Solana DeFi system, with advertising space inside the gameworld, with standard stuff you’d see in crowdfunding platform - NPCs/Quests named after donors, product placement, etc.
While I’ve never personally participated in crowdfunding a game, I am sure some of you have and know the specifics on how these things are done (most recent was Eiyuuden Chronicles or something like that, a Suikoden spiritual successor)
The mmoSOL would (in theory) provide a healthy trickle of funding towards the execution of the business plan, and allow for governance voting on key matters such as appointment of key figures, their salaries, which option to go with, etc.
-------------------------------- | VI Closing Thoughts (wishlist, lol) |------------------------------------------------
Wow, what a thread, huh?
I hope I didn’t bore you, in case you did actually read through all of that, and in case I have, too bad, you probably clicked on this for one reason or the other.
The way I envision this is perhaps something similar to the screenshot attached, 2D, the game in question is is Angels Online, I believe was developed by a Taiwanese company for the PS3 and PC, which I’ve played for a few years…a long, long, long time ago. But hey, anything can really work, like I said in the first tweet: Ragnarok Online, FlyFF, hell even some skateboarding or snowboarding MMO from years before - why not?
Basically anything works - a game where people can go in, vibe, enjoy a few hours, not talk about cryptocurrencies, and just be part of a ‘safe space’, which I feel is needed now, more than ever before, bringing a ray of light in an otherwise very bleak and increasingly digital future.
That’s kind of it for now, I hope you’ve enjoyed this trip down memory lane.
While I was never really a part of the MMORPG scene, the idea of running through Santcum’s Wonderland brings me lot’s of excitement.
