Adventures in NFT Land: An Idea for Bored Ape Yacht Club
I will never forget the night I did not ape into Bored Ape Yacht Club.
It was around 9 PM ET on Friday, April 30th when the “NFT Projects” channel in a Top Shot Discord I am a member of suddenly started buzzing.
“Have you guys seen these apes? They’re all .08 ETH and come with unique traits. No bonding curve. 10,000 available. They look pretty cool. Check it out: https://boredapeyachtclub.com”
That’s not exactly how it went, but it’s close enough, and soon, the volume of messages within that channel started to come through faster and faster. Notification after notification. Momentum. Hype. Buzz. FOMO.
I kept drinking bourbon on the rocks, watching things unfold in real-time. The apes were cool, and definitely a strong brand, that much was evident to me immediately.
24 hours prior, Bored Ape Yacht Club was a newly launched NFT project with beautiful design, thoughtful community plans, and a great premise, but very little volume. But that night, between Discord and Twitter, you could feel something happening.
I had no ETH. I didn’t have an OpenSea account. I never used MetaMask. My only real exposure to NFTs was through Top Shot and a shitty open edition Nifty Gateway experience. So I sat on the sidelines and watched my friends mint ape after ape after ape.
Moments like that are when you appreciate how easy Top Shot has made the experience of buying an NFT relative to anything else.
I went to bed, drunk and apeless, around 1 AM EST.
When I woke up the next day, all 10,000 were sold.
There’s a lot to like about BAYC, and I don’t need to litigate why it’s cool or unique or so successful, because people have made that point time and time again in the month since it’s viral takeover of OpenSea, NFT social media, and Top Shot Twitter. Apes strong together.
But I am not an ape, and I don’t think I am going to become one. Part of it is price, and part of it, similar to missing out on ZenFT Bonsai Trees, is the mystery of paying a fixed price and receiving something unknown vs. paying an inflated price for something specific.
All of that being said, I obviously cannot ignore the enthusiasm and energy behind the project, and all of the new ape avatars taking over my Twitter feed.
It was in the process of researching my most recent article, focused on the NBA Bubble and what an athlete might do on vacation after winning a championship, that an idea came to me about Bored Ape Yacht Club.
An idea laser-focused on perhaps the most compelling aspect on ape ownership: “Ownership and commercial usage rights given to the consumer over their NFT.”
It was on the morning of June 1st, just as my first cup of coffee really started to kick into gear, that the idea for the Bored Ape Banana Boat was born.
This is an idea that I think is really good but I genuinely do not have the bandwidth, capacity, or skill to execute. So I want to share it with this community and perhaps nudge one of you brilliant, beautiful apes to “ape into it” and make it a reality.
For those of you who don’t really know me, I am that person in your friend group that always has really good ideas but never acts on them. Historically speaking, I end up being right 90% of the time, and may or may not stare into the night sky ever so often wondering what could have been.
But ideas are cheap and execution is everything, so let’s explore the idea and see if one of you want to execute on it.
The Bored Ape Banana Boat is an “endless runner” style iOS game that leverages the BAYC brand and your unique IP rights to commercialize and monetize your NFT in an evergreen format that is consumable by a large, diverse audience.
Here’s the general idea: Your ape is the captain of the Banana Boat, which is an excursion from the Yacht Club.
Your ape gives tourists Banana Boat rides on the open seas for as long as they can before all of the passengers fall off the boat or you run out of gas.
While riding the open seas, different obstacles show up in the ocean, which must be navigated around. Bananas show up, which must be collected to continue accruing gas and power for the boat, and HP for riders.
The longer you ride, the more challenging the oceanic terrain becomes.
Over time, you can upgrade your Banana Boat with new features and capabilities, and also add/remove how many riders you have for added fun and difficulty.
If multiple apes decide to embark upon the project, each of their characters can possess different skills and attributes as the captain that make them better or worse at certain elements of driving a banana boat, similar to Crazy Taxi or any other video game.
Naturally, apes with the “Sailor” attributes are most appropriate for the project, but the opportunity exists regardless.
Despite the overwhelming popularity of endless runner games, and the success of Alto’s Run, Flappy Bird, Temple Run, Super Mario Run, and countless other games of this nature, two things remain true:
- None of them feature a primate or ape as the lead character
- None of them take place on water or feature a boat as the primary vehicle
“We want to promote an active, creative community. Part of that means making sure that if you own an ape, you can throw it on a T-shirt, make a print, or create your own derivative NFT using your ape, and sell it. We give a full worldwide license only to the NFT holder to use, copy, and display the purchased art, as well as use it to make any creative, derivative works based upon the NFT.”
— The BAYC Team
Now, obviously, designing, coding, and launching an iOS game isn’t an easy or quick endeavor. But the data shows that iOS games of this fun and casual nature continue to crush it in terms of app downloads, revenue, time, and mindshare. That might be common sense to a lot of people, but sometimes you just need to take a look at the numbers to really emphasize the opportunity.
Here’s data I grabbed from the Udonis Blog that cites AppAnnie and SensorTower research:
- There were a total of 80 billion mobile game downloads in 2020, with an 18% YoY growth. (AppAnnie)
- Players spent $100 billion in mobile games in 2020. (AppAnnie)
- Player spend is set to reach $138 billion by 2025. (SensorTower)
- On average, players spent 4.2 hours per day playing mobile games in 2020. (AppAnnie)
- Mobile ad spend in 2020 reached $240 billion in 2020. (AppAnnie)
- Casual games have the biggest download share (78%). For core games, it’s 20% and for casino games, it’s just 2%. (AppAnnie)
- In 2020, mobile games accounted for 66% of the App Store’s revenue share. (SensorTower)
So far, every project I’ve heard about in public has been merch and NFT expansion/collabs, both of which are cool, but in my opinion, catering to a very limited audience relative to the total “Bored Ape” market. I don’t know what is in the works from real members of the BAYC community, or in that Discord channel.
But I do know that everyone plays mobile games, and the freemium model, where users can buy upgrades and extra lives for a minimal fee, are proven to rake in revenue.
If executed correctly, the Bored Ape Banana Boat game can be a commercial and brand building opportunity with the same launching pad upside in entertainment and media monetization as Angry Birds. It can introduce the non-NFT community and masses to these characters in a format with sticking power and virality. These are bold aspirations, of course, but nobody really would’ve imagined that Angry Birds V1 would eventually become a $350 million box office film with sequels and toys.
That’s what I’ve got. I am happy to collaborate on this with anyone, or lend my creativity and ideas to anyone who wants to run with this, or maybe it’ll rot on the vine like an ugly banana sitting at the bottom of a fruit bowl.
After all, I’m just a human trying to navigate this newfound Planet of the Apes.
Thanks for reading! I typically write about NBA Top Shot 1–2 times per week on this blog, but will be gradually expanding into other NFTs that capture my attention.
