Part III — Putting equality at the core of what we build (aka ‘the twist’)

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In Part II, we revealed that BattleFly’s gameplay revolves around a significant ‘twist’. This twist serves a couple of purposes; it creates a fascinating point of tension in the core game loop, and it puts economic equality at the core of the game. We’ll reveal the twist a little later in this post.

The creation, launch and distribution of Treasure and $Magic revealed much about the character of its founders, and set the standard for the ecosystem. It was free and fair — so fair, in fact, that John and Yyyy neglected to reserve any NFTs for themselves and had to buy them on OpenSea, back when that was a thing.

Equality is an ethos that sits at the very core of the Treasure vision, as a reflection of both the values of its founders and the incredible community that has quickly formed around it.

We admire the runaway momentum of early blockchain games like Axie Infinity — break-out successes that have amassed hundreds of thousands of players across developing nations such as the Philippines. The shadow of this phenomenon has been the increasing dominance of speculators within those games, who have inflated the NFT asset price to an extent where the cost to play vastly exceeds what much of the world’s population can afford.

To put this in perspective — around the time of Axie’s launch, building a competitive Axie team cost roughly ~11% of the average monthly Filipino salary; by late 2021 this had inflated to 3–4x the average monthly salary.

We wanted to learn from these pioneers, and find a way to design a game mechanic for Season 1 that would enable people to play and enjoy BattleFly for under $20 without having to use scholarships. Our hope is that players will find BattleFly’s starting price accessible, and that by putting equality at the core of the game design, we can reduce the negative impacts of unexpected success and speculation.

We’ve made BattleFly more equal in three distinct ways:

Firstly, alongside the rest of the Treasure ecosystem, BattleFly will take place on Arbitrum, an L2 Ethereum protocol with substantially lower gas fees than L1. By reducing the cost of gas fees to play BattleFly by 90%, we’re dramatically increasing the potential audience for the game.

Secondly, the twist.

In Season 1, BattleFlys will collect mods in The Garden and battle for staked $Magic in the Hyperdomes. But they do this with a limited lifespan of just two weeks, before they are locked in The Rift, ready for Season 2’s journey into the broader Treasure metaverse.

This means that players have two weeks to build the best load-out they can for their BattleFly, and make as much ROI as possible, before the NFT is placed into stasis for the rest of the first season.

We hope that the net effect of this will be to limit the amount of inflation that can happen to the price of BattleFlys. Because the available remaining ROI diminishes in step with the remaining lifespan, the price of a BattleFly over a fortnight should roughly follow a bell curve, with the rewards flowing to users who play a good strategy, rather than those who can afford to pay the most.

Thirdly, players won’t be able to simply buy Mods and build invincible BattleFlys. If Elon or Jeff Bezos decide to buy cocoons, their BattleFlys will have to salvage Mods in the garden just like all the others.

We’ve made Season 1 of BattleFly an auto-playing idle game to reward players who develop and execute winning strategies. Having more time, or more money than other players won’t give you a clear advantage.

One more thing — we will enable players to stake $Magic Liquidity Pool tokens to improve the performance of their BattleFlys. As Gaarp puts it, liquidity = life in the metaverse, and we want to reward players who believe in $Magic and play their part in making it a functioning currency. Our view is that liquidity Pooling is not exclusive, and even a tiny amount of LP will help give your BattleFlys a boost. If you’re new to $Magic and Treasure, here’s a good primer to get you started.

Let’s recap: BattleFlys salvage Mods, compete to earn ROI, have an initial lifespan of just two weeks, and then are locked in The Rift awaiting a future phase. You may be wondering whether there is a broader purpose at play here — is the game simply about building BattleFlys and testing them in combat — or is there something more at stake?

Short answer — there is, and we reveal more in Part IV — Proof of Consequence.