Captain’s Log №.2112
Together with the team at Calystral, we are working on our first video game called Synergy of Serra. It has been a great journey so far, and there are incredible things still to happen. Therefore, we wanted to take the time to write this article, to reiterate our mission and to thank you all for your long time support.
The team
We started brainstorming this project in 2018 and started on the concept in early 2019. We started this project from scratch without investors or funding. Just a bunch of people having this dream of working for their passion. An idealistic thought that we strive to make a reality.
We are passionate about creating an understanding work environment that doesn’t feel like working. We support the team to creatively express themselves in such a way that it makes a difference in the world. We enable the team to live their passion, create art and shape childhood dreams.
Unfortunately, art can’t be rushed, and we are only human, humans that have emotions, beliefs and needs like free time. For years now, the team has invested more time and energy than they have because they love this project, and they did it all without monetary payment until October 2021.
Now we are sold out! You, our supporters, have provided an insane amount of money for this project, showing us your belief in Synergy of Serra and our overall vision. With that, we are now scaling the team, scaling our processes, and even scaling our ideas and ambitions.
Thank you all so much! We are here for the long run, we will stick to our vision and mission, we are not going away, and we are here to enjoy the journey together with you.
Our Mission is..
… to enrich gamers’ experiences, protect them from malicious players, and enable them to truly own their items and characters. Develop games that utilize ethical monetization models that do not prey upon human psychology but are powered by intrinsic value. To aid the quest to discover, explore and create new genres of games with creativity and art at their very core. Create fair and trustless, disruptive games that empower gamers to challenge the status quo.
We believe that people with PASSION can move the world to be BETTER.
We believe that blockchain can break all the limits of games seen before.
We believe that games that move people create more personal value.
We believe that games are much more than just ‘games’.
We believe in games made for the people giving back to the people.
We believe in creating a world where your parents can’t tell you that games are a waste of time.
With that in mind, are we going in the right direction? Yes. We are creating a game, a world, where everyone associated with it thrives.
Synergy of Serra is going to be a competitive Skill2Win game where the better strategist may win. It is about how strategic you can think and how fast you are able to adapt to the complexity and depth of the game, each turn! It won’t matter how expensive the cards you bring to the table are since we have a mixed-decks mechanic that shares all the cards with the opponent.
We believe that time is the most valuable asset you have in life, and it’s our goal to value everyone’s time. It applies to our team where we work together with people who are very passionate about what they are doing and not because they are just paid for a “job”. The same applies to our community.
We don’t want to support the pass to trade your time for money and just grind a game even though it’s very boring to play. This is not what Play2Earn means for us. The difference between a game where gamers are extrinsically rewarded to give their all and a game where gamers are intrinsically motivated to do so is the difference between a game filled with mercenaries versus one filled with zealots.
Mercenaries play hard only so long as they are paid top dollar for their effort. There is little loyalty to the game or the team. There is no real sense of joy or feelings that anyone is contributing to something larger than themselves. Mercenaries are not likely to play out of love and devotion.
In contrast, Serrans are zealots who love being a part of the community, a new world. Though Serrans may generously earn playing the game they love, they aren’t doing it to earn in the first place. Instead, they are gamers who love the game because it teaches them to think out of the box, challenges them, and overall creates an enjoyable experience. Serrans are playing because they genuinely enjoy it and believe in the bigger overall vision.
What’s next to come?
Crate Opening
Our next milestone is the Crate Opening, finally letting our cards come to life as NFTs. For us, this is a very important milestone. Besides our gameplay mechanics, the artworks are for sure the most praised by the community and equally by the team. Our artists are just incredible talented (thanks!).
By achieving this milestone, the artworks will be minted as NFTs within the card frame. This enables all of us to see, collect, and trade the first collection of cards, the Transcendent Set. It is a first step into Serra’s collectibles and Serra’s economy.
For everyone who hasn’t been here since the release of Alpha Fame (or even the start of pre-sale 👀), we are able to show that we are a trusted team and able to deliver. It is also important for us to showcase how much effort we have put into this in terms of quality, technical pioneering, and vision. Achieving a new milestone by releasing a new feature always is very exciting. But it only turns out to be a positive experience if it runs technically smooth and fair! I can promise that the opening experience will be stunning!
A lot of extra work has flown into the challenge of having the smoothest and fairest launches of NFTs, especially when it comes to low #mint-numbers. All Serrans will have the same chance, protected against bots, for the valuable mint #0 NFTs with proven on-chain randomness and transparency. For this, we have not spared any efforts.
(More details to come for the Crate Unlocking Event.)
Technical Pioneering
Since the very beginning, we saw the potential benefits blockchain could bring for gamers. But at the same time, it comes with many technological barriers. We love the challenge of pioneering new technical solutions to overcome those barriers.
In Synergy of Serra’s current state, we have achieved that no gamer is required to understand the technicals of blockchain, install annoying plugins, or need to own any cryptocurrencies for transactions. Just sign-up with your email and set a password like any other game account, and you are good to go. This will apply for all our upcoming features like the game itself, our marketplace, liquidity pools, and more.
All of this without sacrificing any of the benefits of blockchain technology. We will utilise Play2Earn, trading, DeFi, and more without any disincentive. We will stay true to our goal to utilise blockchain to enhance games, not as an obstacle.
(More details to come for the marketplace and liquidity pools.)
Virtual Super Reality
The future of Synergy of Serra is exciting, as is the future of technology in general. We strongly believe that life moves more into the digital world. So why wouldn’t humankind create a “Virtual Super Reality” if they can? We call it a Virtual Super Reality because it will be a virtual world where everything will be more real than our known reality. You can imagine it like increasing the saturation, contrast, sharpness of photos on social media.
That’s an example for just 2d visuals. But technology will advance to connect your brain with a digital world so tight that we can’t tell the difference anymore. It creates a world with no limitations, higher saturated visuals, smells, touches, tastes, hearing, maybe overall feelings.
Good examples of imagining a Virtual Super Realities are Ready Player One or Swords Art Online. If it’s good or not, everyone has to decide for themselves. Either way, we are convinced it will happen because technology will advance fast and break any limitations.
Why does a Virtual Super Reality matter for games? We believe that technology and thus games will advance to make a Virtual Super Reality possible. First, starting as games, it will turn into a second reality. It will be hard even to argue what is still a game and what is a second digital reality. People will spend time there, play games there, entertain themselves there, even work and earn (P2E) their daily bread and butter there to make a living in the real world.
By creating games, we are creating worlds — new realities! And we are responsible for them!! We believe that games are more than just entertainment that preys on you. Games can enrich and add value to your time in a fair and trustless way. Gamers can be empowered by games. Gamers can be more through games. Games can reward you manifold. Games can be more.
We can’t make everybody happy, and it is not our goal to do so. But we want to make Gamers happy. We have and will remain faithful to our vision — Unleashing the Potential of Gamers. We are creating Soul Games, games our younger self could only have dreamed of. We challenge us, we challenge the status quo, and we challenge YOU!
Who are we?
Our vision at Calystral is to unleash the potential of gamers. We are focusing on building games where the time and effort put in is rewarded with real value. Enhancing the players’ experience and empowering gamers to achieve more. In the process we strive to overcome technical limitations of Blockchain Technology and use its benefits to lift games to the next level. We would love to share these solutions with the community and other developers. Towards a better future of Gaming!
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