DEGEN Updates #2
5 min readJun 18, 2022
It’s been a busy two weeks in the Citadel!
In this second release of DEGEN Updates, we’ll provide a roundup of product and game development updates since our last publication (6/4/22), as well as our focus for the next 2 weeks.
We also have several important updates to share regarding our team, hiring plans, tournaments, and NFT NYC!
Game Development Updates
- 6/15/22: Released our first Arcade Game — WEN Game! We went into all the details in our WEN Game WENsday post. We have seen promising early engagement and lots of competition on the leaderboard.
What’s next?
- Kicking off work on the Game UI Package, which will be led by Doctor Sparkles (luckily she has loads of experience building these!)
- The Gym Tutorial is in QA and will be shipped within the next 2 weeks.
- The new Bolo’s Rodeo map for Nifty Smashers is in QA and will be shipped within the next 2 weeks.
- Continued work on Nifty Tennis (led by Renoki, Spike & Stealth Game Dev Ninja), Niftyverse Netcode (led by Sahin), the new Animation System (led by Will), Nifty Smashers abuse mediation and our new ban dashboard which will be used by mods (led by Zoiby).
Product Updates
- 6/8/22: Launched our very first Leaderboard feature, supporting NiftySmashers and 3 Leaderboard types.
- 6/15/22: Launched our in-game (non-ERC-20) Arcade Tokens! We went into all the details in our WEN Game WENsday post. Approximately 48 hours post-go-live and we’ve seen ~250 unique players and burned +250k NFTL via Arcade Token pack purchases (with ~20% of transactions from Renters and 80% from Owners).
- 6/15/22: Launched the WEN Game All-Time High Score Leaderboard
- 6/17/22: Shipped a new feature limiting DEGEN Rental Sponsorships on Rare, Meta, and Legendary Background DEGENs to DEGEN Owners only — the goal with this feature is to increase the (1) value of owning a DEGEN, and (2) rental rate of Common DEGENs. Please note, it will still be possible for people (1) who do not own a DEGEN to sponsor all Common DEGENs enabled for public renting, (2) to rent a Rare, Meta, or Legendary Background DEGEN directly if it’s enabled for public renting, and (3) to sponsor recruits on all DEGENs you own. Furthermore, we will be capping the number of active sponsorships a DEGEN owner may have on non-Common DEGENs next week (based on the type of DEGEN owned — Common, Rare, Meta, or Legendary).
- 6/17/22: Introduced a new Check Your Rank feature on Leaderboards for WEN Game— tapping it populates a neat art/graphic-based Leaderboards image with your profile name/wallet address displayed and a CTA to share on Twitter.
What’s next?
- Weekly and monthly time filters to Leaderboards for Nifty Smashers and WEN Game.
- Implement the Check Your Rank feature and graphic-based Leaderboard with social sharing for Nifty Smashers.
- Build the earnings cap progress visualization for Smashers Web, the Dashboard page, and the rentals page (thanks for the feedback, SJP and Peach Guild!)
- Introduce an active rental confirmation so it’s clear for renters upon connecting their wallet and opening the app that a rental is active.
- Add WEN Game to Gamer Profile.
- Scope a potential referral feature for WEN Game.
- Start working on user flows and designs for a few important longer-term projects — more info to come in the weeks to follow!
Marketing & Business Development
- Final stages of discussions with a stealth branding, marketing, and PR agency partner specializing in web3 (we are also involving our VCs in due diligence).
- Co-Hosting an event, TESHIMI Yacht Party at NFT NYC on June 23rd with the Forgotten Runes Wizard Cult and Worldwide Webb3 for DEGEN owners. Please note, that registration is closed until Bolo is made aware of cancellations. Please message Bolo in the Lair if you are interested in attending. If spots open up closer to the event, he will reach out.
- We plan to host another tournament in ~2 weeks which will be in a regional format (restricting time zones for players will help speed up tournament play, stream casting, and prevent language barriers). Please note, that this tournament has been postponed due to much of the team attending NFT NYC.
Team Updates
- We welcomed three new members to the team — Sahin Aliyev (Sr. Game Engineer), Nicolas Morga (Sr. Web3 Engineer), and Gideon Awolesi, (Product Designer).
- We parted ways with Koa as VP of Product and wish him all the best in his next endeavors. We sincerely appreciate all that Koa has done for Nifty League and our community. Please read Andy’s Discord announcement for more details.
We look forward to continuing to build through this bear with our DEGEN fam! See you in NYC 🗽🛥️
Much Love,
Team Nifty League
