DEGEN Updates #3
In this third release of DEGEN Updates, we share a recap of NFT NYC, exciting Marketing and Community news, Product and Game Development updates since our last publication (and a look ahead for the coming 2 weeks), and a very BOLOISH team update!
Before we dive in, we want to say thank you to all of our long-term investors and believers. We know that the current market conditions can be stressful to navigate — and that’s why we truly value your support. You are the reason we are here. Your input and feedback have been paramount to our project’s success to date. We build for you and look forward to continuing to deliver DEGENs the value they deserve, especially in the bear 👾 💜
NFT NYC
Bronze Event Sponsor
Seeing so many new faces love playing Smashers at our table at the Marriott Marquis Times Square was incredible — we even sold a few DEGENs on the spot 😏 Bolo reported that people were literally walking up and couldn’t help but laugh and have fun while playing. That laughter is contagious — and keeps us hyped to keep sharing the Nifty League story day after day!
DEGEN Dinner
The following NFT NYC coverage was kindly drafted by our Community Mod, NARD 🙏
Teshimi Yacht Party hosted by Nifty League, Forgotten Runes Wizard Cult & Worldwide Webb
A DEGEN, a wizard, and an avatar walk up to a bar…on a yacht…
TL;DR
- On 6/23/2022, three of the most innovative and influential pixel NFT projects partied the night away aboard DJ Tropix’s NYC yacht tour
- The yacht had 2 fully stocked open bars and a room filled floor to ceiling with NYC pizza
- A Nifty Smasher’s booth was set up (with 0 latency!) and the IRL competition was FIERCE
- Nifty League’s new Compete & Earn trailer was playing on repeat in the downstairs lounge
- The dance floor was getting wilder as the sun started to set behind the NYC skyline
- Austin Kenneth was drawing live art that was later raffled… and a DEGEN won it (LFG)
- There were VIPs from investment firms and P2E influencers
- And Bolo Dave was wearing an iconic Nifty League branded Bolo tie (thanks to Corduroy Pillows)
The Yacht Party
I couldn’t imagine a better way to end the week of NFT NYC 2022 than with a private yacht party on the Hudson River with Nifty League DEGENs and frens. The excitement from the line that zagged along the port was palpable. Laughter filled the air and hugs were standard, making this party feel more like a reunion of sorts… except most of the people were meeting IRL for the first time! It was a dream come true to get to connect with the Nifty League Team (Andy, Mike, Bolo Dave, & Jeff) and the amazing Nifty League DEGEN fam.
The yacht had a lower deck with a bar, some sitting booths, a TV set up with Nifty Smasher’s + 2 controllers, and a projector playing the Nifty League Compete & Earn trailer on repeat. Whenever I went down to the lower deck, there were always people battling it out on Nifty Smashers. Some of the top smashers were aboard too including Fvsvy, Jiggy, and RealDeal. The drinks were flowing, people were gaming, and on the upper deck, DJ Tropix was playing a fire 3-hour set that got the whole yacht rocking.
The upper deck was packed with people connecting, dancing, and clearly having a good time as the yacht cruised down the Hudson River. I remember just chilling with DScheezy and taking it all in — the setting, the wind, the sites and sounds. We stopped right in front of the Statue of Liberty for group photos and the scene was simply surreal.
As the sun started to set behind the NYC skyline, the good times kept on rolling. That’s when Bolo Dave came out with some honorary Nifty League Bolo Ties which were hand crafted by Corduroy Pillows using Volta’s 3D NL design. This is my one and only Bolo tie and it truly means so much to me.
Throughout the night there was a live art drawing by Austin Kenneth and the art was raffled to one lucky attendee. I’m pleased to say that MassRez won the raffle and got to take home a sweet memento for the trip!
As we neared the shore DJ Tropix invited team members from each NFT project onboard to say some closing words. The yacht party ended with a BOLOISH roar from the dance floor and security had to usher people off because we just didn’t want the yacht party to end!
A big shoutout to all you DEGENs that were able to make it out to NYC and jam with us on the yacht. I hope our next IRL event will be able to accommodate even more Nifty League DEGENs, because y’all bring the love wherever you go! Until then, we’ll just party it up in the #degen-lair.
Thank you for the lovely piece on NFT NYC, NARD 🙏
Game Updates
- 6/28/22: Released Satoshi’s Gym — this map is a really fun way for the beginner or even the advanced player to practice those bat skills and get those reps in. We were excited to see the warm reception from the community, and look forward to increasing newb engagement and improving player onboarding via Satoshi’s Gym.
What’s next?
- Shipping Bolo’s Rodeo (aka Bolodeo) Map in Nifty Smashers (Snarfy)
- Compete & Earn Alpha — initially launching via a whitelist for players to opt-in to participate in this new game mode (Sahin)
- In-game UI framework including Gamer Profile (Ashley)
- Continue early development of our ‘Central HUB’ (Ashley)
- Animation System to support items-equipping (Will)
- Ongoing Nifty Tennis and Niftyverse dev
Product Updates
- Earnings Cap Progress & Reset Feature added to Smashers, Dashboard & Rentals pages
- Added WEN game to the Gamer Profile
- Added the Active Rental reminder. We heard from players with active rentals that they oftentimes didn’t realize their rental was active, so we are testing an in-dashboard dialog featuring the DEGEN rented and % earned toward the rental period earning’s cap. The target metric for the feature is Player (Renter) Activation Rate (which, notably, impacts other metrics like Sponsor Satisfaction and Retention).
- Added support to the Nifty Smashers Leaderboard for ‘Check Your Rank’. After clicking, the graphic Leaderboard opens (shown below) — it’s designed for sharing on Twitter. Go flex your rank and stats!
- Improved cosmetic filter behavior
- Bug fixes: made the ‘Buy NFTL’ text clickable in Buy Arcade Token flow, Leaderboards improvements on mobile, removed the Terminate button for direct renters in the rentals table
What’s next?
- Items Equipping ahead of Comics burning — Smart Contract, Frontend, Backend and graphics (Diego, David, Andy, Zoiby, Mike, Gideon)
- Improving the Rental Overview Dialog (with the goal to increase the CvR from opening the dialog to renting successfully) (Nicolas)
- Continued work building out our Data Pipeline (Caleb)
- External website improvements and tweaks
- Fix the earnings cap ratios on the Rentals page (thanks, SJP)
Marketing & Community
- 6/30/22: Rewards for WEN Game. Congrats to the king himself, SEIYA (#1 with a high score of 395 🤯) for winning DEGEN #9901. Andy minted the first DEGEN in our coveted 7th Tribe (the final 100 of the 10k DEGEN genesis NFTs) on 7/2/22, and, fittingly, he pulled a Meta background — the most rare 🏆
- Big congrats to rifachnia 🇮🇩 (#2 with a high score of 148) — DEGEN #4804 is all yours. We love seeing new, talented players become DEGEN owners — welcome to the Lair, ser! This is what it’s all about for us here at Nifty League.
- Huge shout out to PaRa80L1C 🇺🇸 (#3 with a high score of 119) — and say hello to your new alien DEGEN, Space Looter!
- We sent 25 Arcade Tokens (and a Comic #1 is headed your way) to DEGENs placing #4 to #10 (awesome accomplishment all!), and as a thank you to everyone who played WEN at least once within the first 2 weeks of launch, we sent you 10 Arcade Tokens. Keep sharpening those bat skills fam…you just never know when Satoshi will be watching 👀
- 6/30/22: Hosted our bi-weekly Twitter Spaces where we provided updates to the community, announced our WEN Game Leaderboard awards, and took questions from the Lair.
- Expect to hear more details regarding tournaments in the coming week. Nifty Morgan is working with Zoiby, Bolo Dave and our Community Mods to operationalize tournaments here at Nifty League. We believe competition creates a healthy gaming ecosystem built for the long haul, which is why we are focused on delivering our players (and Clubs) regular, regional tournaments, in addition to the Compete & Earn product (an always-on, micro-tournament game mode in Nifty Smashers) 🏆🥇🥈🥉
Team Updates & Hiring
We are excited to welcome David Horachek to the Game Development team! David has over 20 years of experience as a videogame software engineer, and is a specialist in animation systems engineering and applied mathematics. He has built numerous AAA games while working at companies like Ubisoft and Midway Games. We look forward to introducing David to the DEGEN community in the coming BOLOISH Fridays and/or Twitter Spaces! Welcome to the family, ser 💜 🇨🇦
Our highest priority engineering hire currently is for a Sr. Game Developer with gaming backend experience. Given the nature and specialty of the role, we are working closely with our talent partners at Toptal, Braintrust, and Blind on this hire.
We continue to nail down the scope of work and engagement details with web3 marketing agencies/studios, and were excited to be able to meet several of the team members last week at NFT NYC!
To all those in the USA, have a wonderful 4th of July weekend with family and friends 🇺🇸 🎆
Much Love,
Team Nifty League
