Ballerz Games

Building the largest and most retentive web3 sports player base

Two weeks ago, I shared that I was working on a game on the Flow blockchain. The IP is Ballerz, a 10k generative, basketball-themed NFT project. Sports NFTs have the ability to broaden to a mainstream audience and Flow is becoming THE blockchain for sports NFTS (NBA Top Shot, NFL All Day, etc.). Today, I want to share our thinking and philosophy behind the Ballerz games ecosystem.

North Star (Where we are going)

The Ballerz portfolio of games will have the largest and most retentive player base in web3 sports games.

Tenets (What we believe in)

A tenet is a principle or belief honored by a person or, more often, a group of people. One thing I picked up working for Amazon is to start most documents with tenets because we need to align on what we believe in before we discuss strategy.

Here are tenets for Ballerz Games:

1. Community first. We need to do right by customers who have invested their precious time and money into our project. That means prioritizing long-term growth, which is often painful.
2. Art drives commerce, not the other way around. The current era of game monetization (F2P) focuses on providing value to gamers first, before you ask them for money (usually spent on cosmetic items). Web3 games have turned that upside down by asking players to spend hundreds to thousands of dollars upfront. We will focus on providing fun/value first.
3. Expand the base. Even if we expand to 10k unique holders, that’s not enough players to sustain a F2P economy. We’re using games to transcend the Ballerz IP into a household name and that means growing beyond the original NFT holders.
4. Not an insider’s game. We’re going to be as transparent as possible. It’s not about being in the right group chat, the right discord, etc. Generally, “show, not tell” works best in game development, but in web3 games — we’re competing for attention against both web3 and web2 entertainment.

Strategy (How do we get to the North Star)

Strategy is as much about what we’re not going to do as what we are going to do. For example, building an Otherside just doesn’t make much sense as the first Ballerz game nor is it that relevant for sports fans.

Our strategy is to create a series of mini-games built on established game concepts while we build a flagship game experience. The monetization models are going to be more F2P than P2E.

1. Why mini-games? Building a fun game that can retain users will take months (browser/instant games) to years (MMOs). Web3 degens don’t have that level of patience and there are plenty of new web2/web3 projects constantly vying for their attention.
2. Why established game concepts? New game genres and new game concepts take years to come to fruition. There’s just too much risk. We’re much better off delivering mini-games that have an established audience (e.g. smaller version of NBA Jam, Triple Triad, etc.).

Roadmap

The first game we’re focusing on is an idle, basketball simulation browser game. Players can view, bet on, and potentially contort the league’s rules via weekly elections. Think Salty Bet but with a NBA Jam-like game that is powered via Basketball GM simulation ‘engine.’ There are two game modes that we’re calling ‘active’ and ‘passive’ — we will come up with better names soon!

The passive game is free-to-play. Players will pick one team per week and the season will run itself and there will be a winner at the end of the week. Specific details like number of players, rewards, and more will come later.

The active game requires having Ballerz and potentially Sneakerz. Two players will select X Ballerz, equip Y Sneakerz and the competition will either be simulated or adopt a rock/paper/scissor approach.

We will share more on Twitter Spaces at 1pm on Friday, July 1st.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What about UBL?

UBL is great and that’s what helped us decide to focus first on an advanced simulation game. In terms of what we’re going to do with the UBL, we will create a plan after our first game is in development. Games and esports are closely intertwined and we expect the game to drive the competition.

2. What do accessories do?

Every accessory will have an ability that will affect existing stats (shooting, dunks, playmaking, defense, jump) or applied differently depending on the game and/or setting. Accessories that are more rare will have higher impact in specific games. For example, if a game depends on vision, 3D Glasses will benefit the Baller more than something like an armband/headband, which are more common

3. How do I submit game ideas?

This community is full of great ideas and we’re piloting a system for intake, evaluation, and decision with the Whalez community. We will evaluate if, how, and when we would expand this to the broader Ballerz community.

I’ll keep updating the FAQ section as I get more questions and we’ll migrate these to the Ballerz website once we have a games section up and running.