Milestones, Obstacles & The Road Ahead

The good, the bad & what we're doing about it!

With Gnomeski’s move to a new house culminating in this week of him not being able to write the newsletter, you are left at the mercy of peth’s keyboard 😱

Season 4 Roadmap Review session revealed we’re doing better than some of us thought - we’re on our way to complete most if not all that’s on there.

But if you’ve been around for a while, you know that crypto moves fast & MetaGame moves just too damn slow 😬

🤬 MetaGame Frustrations

Discounting frustrations that inevitably arise in & between people working together on something chaotic, working on MetaGame has mostly been fun & laughter.

Let’s not fully discount frustrations tho…

Although completely normal that people get frustrated, its not OK to let it spill into public discussions. Something I’ve personally been guilty of as well.

The spillage of frustrations conjures up bad vibes and:

👉 Bad vibes are death of community 👈

Last time we did a community survey, MetaGame was described “the most warm & welcoming community I’ve joined” by a bunch of people. Let’s not ruin it 🙏

To any lurker: if you’re scrolling down a channel & feel a bad vibe or see something wrong, please immediately declare so in the channel or report to 🚨-issues-n-ideas.

Issues should not be swept under the rug but discussed in proper spaces - a conflict resolution channel & conflict resolution calls.

😅 Sometimes too much, mostly not enough!

Besides a few people giving too much feedback & in wrong places, people generally don’t like giving feedback for a bunch of reasons:

• If you’re new, you might think something like “its not my place to whine”

• If you don’t know people, you don’t know how they take feedback

• If you see some people reacting badly to it, its unlikely you will give any

• Once you know people, we’re all trying to be friends & nice to each other…

• Then, you need to actually go through the effort of going to a place dedicated for feedback & writing something thoughtful, well balanced.

In short, useful feedback all too often stays locked inside people’s heads, where it breeds frustration until they bursts out, leave MetaGame or both 😬

I cannot stress enough how important feedback loops are:

• Without the knowledge of things going wrong, you cannot correct course

• Without correcting course…

👉 Lack of feedback loops is death of orgs 👈

🤔 Some Solutions…

Before continuing on to other problems & more solutions, here are 2 simple things we’ll implement to try & surface feedback as well as punish bad behavior:

• NotCoolCall - a weekly call every Monday after Champions Ring, to surface and discuss anything & everything wrong with MetaGame or it’s participants.

• A FuckUp Jar - if you haven’t delivered on your promise as promised or stepped over the line & been an asshole - maybe drop some Seeds here.

If you think these are not good solutions or wish to further discuss them, please join us next Monday 🙃

If you left MetaGame but never told us why, now would be a good time 😁

🤩 And the good stuff?

Aaah yes, the good stuff. I’d say overall, we’ve succeeded in building a great engaged community with people that really care for each other (ok maybe not all 😅), for MetaFam & the future of MetaGame.

Sure some people fight & leave, but that happens in all families!

Overall, its been a positive experience & for me personally, pretty damn epic. MetaGame went from being a crazy figment of my imagination to a collective dream of a community, vibing around it & making it real.

Among other things, we’ve held over 100 community gatherings with 50+ guest speakers & projects. Recorded over 30 podcast episodes, did a load of workshops & other social events. Organized a conference, a hackathon & a festival…

And as mentioned above, the Season 4 Roadmap Review session has actually been great with pretty much everything on track to be finished 🤷‍♂️

😬 So much still to be done!

Yet the technological side of MetaGame has always been slow…

Other than a community & an experiment in bootstrapping, MetaGame was supposed to be a platform. We’ve built the first version of MyMeta profiles, the first version of the megamenu & the dashboard - but it took us ages.

2 years doesn’t sound like a lot of time but its an eternity in crypto. Enough time for projects that were ahead of the game to become completely forgotten.

And its happening to us…

So much to be done!

🤦‍♂️ But only a few hours per week…

To almost everyone, MetaGame is something they dedicate a few hours to after they’re done with work & all other responsibilities. Somehow, I thought it’s the same whether we have got 8 players contributing 1h/day or 1 player contributing 8h/day.

• Even better, I thought, its more decentralized! Built by a network of freelancers.

Thing is, freelancers don’t manage projects, don’t make sure strategic moves are made, roadmaps are clear, deadlines set, good-first-issues are created for new people & all of that.

Also, people that only work a few hours per week take weeks to complete quests…

Overall, the more people, the harder the coordination. Sounds self-evident, but how much harder can it be, you know? Well, Much. Harder.

✊ Full-time MetaGame

Treat it as a hobby, get hobby-level pace & results.
The point is, if we want MetaGame to not get left behind in the dust, unused & forgotten by everyone - we need to pick up pace & professionalize.

To do this, we need at least a few people on the technical side to work full or close to full time. We need people to proudly be able to say “I’m full-time at MetaGame.”

Some builders are already considering jumping in full-time but its just way too risky as it currently stands. A few builders working full-time & the Seed pool goes dry 😬

🌱 Seed Fund DAO 💰

So, we’re raising money!

If you’ve been following the story for a while, you’ll know we’ve done a lot of great things but just move too damn slow.

We got a great bunch of people that are here for the right reasons but unable to dedicate more time because of the uncertainty around the pay.

Well, we’re raising a few mil to change that!

• Having money in the treasury will provide more certainty for the people that are considering jumping in full time.

• Having more people jump in full time will provide MetaGame with energy to turn from a hobby project to a proper organization.

There will be a Seed Fund DAO that will allow patrons to minimize their risk by being able to ragequit later. There will be another newsletter that will better explain how the fundraiser will work etc.

• Want in on it? Sit tight or contact me on telegram @petheth

• Want to immediately support us? I’d suggest buying one of these 👇

😱 Genesis MetaManifesto NFTs

We’ve minted these Genesis MetaManifesto NFTs for people to signal their alignment with the MetaManifesto & support MetaGame.

You can read more about these & pick them up through here. If anything, go check out the epic version because the 3D animation looks pretty damn sweet.

⚔️ The 300 of MetaGame

In MetaGame, we got this meme of The 300 of MetaGame.

Don’t worry! This meme is being processed to be made more diverse

In short, The 300 of MetaGame are the 150 Players & 150 Patrons that will be known as the ones that brought MetaGame to life. There are leaderboards for both & they will be finalized at the end of Phase I - in something like 6 months.

After the latest purge, there’s still about 100 spots left to join the 300 of MetaGame. 60 spots for players & 40 spots for patrons 👀

The bar for joining as a player has been raised but you’ll make it if you really want to.

Just hurry!

👉 Open Roles 👀

We’ve been bringing more & more new builders but none of them seemed to stick around for long; without full time builders or at least a project manager, newcomer’s questions & PRs go stale. Engaged Octos disengage.

💪 Senior Builder

Not exactly a senior? Not a problem! As long as you got some skills & are able to dedicate more than part-time. If not, part-time is ok, he-he 😇

No but for realz, we’re in a serious need for people that can dedicate more than just a few hours per week. Its hard to build anything in a respectable amount of time with just a few hours per week. Its also hard not to disappoint newcomers with the time their PRs stay unreviewed & their progress blocked.

🤝 Technical Project Manager

…or a technical project manager kind of person… No, Michiel is not leaving us but he’s busy & its hard for him to dedicate much time outside the weekly Builder Align calls.

We need help engaging new builders, facilitating the flow between new & old builders as well as generally keeping things moving. @people in issues & PRs, make sure they get assigned & once they do, that they don’t go stale.

⚔️ Quests Champion

Similar to the above but for the rest of MetaGame. Their role will be to follow the needs of MetaGame & write up new quests as well as surface old ones that went stale, then keep the ❓-quests channel fresh.

Other than that, they will lead the migration of quests from Notion to the website.

🤖 Botsmiths Champion

A breed of builders specialized in working on bots. We have various needs in terms of bot maintenance & the building of new features, but nobody leading the effort. Got the know-how? Know someone who does?

❓ Other Roles

Don’t fit any of the above roles & don’t know anyone who does? There is no lack of other open roles. From artists, designers & writers over shitposters & headhunters to innkeepers, bridgebuilders & rainmakers - we need all of them!

Note: Not sure how to start fulfilling the role you want? Ask about it.

❓ Random Quests 👀

🔎 Bring Them

Know anyone that fits any of the above roles? Bring them to MetaGame & introduce them. The more important the role, the bigger the reward. The higher the person’s eventual impact, more Seeds for you!

🐥 Twitterer

Got an idea for what we should be tweeting from the MetaGame account? There’s a channel for that! Anything goes! From funny shitposts, over random wisdom & educational content to whatever else & back to funny shitposts! Go get some XP!

⛓️ Weekly Chainlog

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Community

• Tommy helps schedule another Community Gathering

• In Tommy’s absence, Penguin facilitates it

• Misanth ideates a pretty big update to the first part of the onboarding flow

• Luxumbra continues being an overall warm & useful person with his feedback around discord as well as on github

• Misanth holds another cohort onboarding session

• 2 new Engaged Octos graduate to Players, congrats vid & Hbesso!

• Misanth continues plugging away at things in Notion, organizing & making it easier to understand.

• Polimyl becomes the first to say he got too many Seeds, others follow

• tenfinney made upgrades to the cryptovoxels onboarding flow

• Michiel gets the past month’s mint underway

• tommy starts working on the new necromancing list 👀

🛠️ Technology

• Dave designs a new, mobile-friendly progress bar for the MyMeta profile creation flow

• vid & Luxumbra build the Dashboard as well as everything that goes into it

• Udit implements formatting in the Quests, continuing the work on the module

• dysbulic continues holding pair-programming sessions & helping people around the repo

• Bacon bridges Seeds over to Polygon & starts playing with setting up the pool on it’s testnet

• Dave starts consolidating the Component Library (basis for the Design System)

• tenfinney does two pair-programming sessions

• penguin fixes the Wick verification gatekeeping

• tenfinney starts working on Playbooks UI

🗺️ Content

• FearlessThompson records a wiki walkthrough video

• biuxmaster finishes all versions of the MetaManifesto

• peth pushes a proposal & mints all versions of the MetaManifesto

• karmaticacid writes show notes for the new MetaView episode with Roberto & Laura of Liminal Village

• eowulia facilitates the process, edits & publishes the episode

• peth finishes v1 of the pitch deck & records v1 of the pitch

• peth records a new podcast episode, with Richard Bartlett of Enspiral.

• FearlessThompson edits & uploads the recording of the recent Community Gathering with Ethernaut & UBI Blockchain Collective

• FearlessThompson records, edits & uploads the Community Gathering with Maria Helena Trad as a guest

• peth puts up a proposal on whether we should onboard YapDAO

• karmaticacid writes show notes for the new episode of Share What You’re Makin’ with Chair & Bacon

• Eowulia edits & publishes it

• Pronoia continues reliably recording every Community Gathering

• biuxmaster makes templates for MetaRadio animations to be used for uploading the podcast episodes to youtube.

• eowulia improves one of the templates & makes the first video

• Misanth improves the Playbooks workflow & writes a bunch of workflow playbooks.

• peth puts up a proposal on whether we should onboard d0rg

📈 Growth

• Arwyn shills MetaGame to the local crypto nomad community meetup in Tulum & organizes a party for the MetaVerse Music Festival.

• HBesso has invites Deep Work to come present Deep Skills to MetaGame for potential integration with MyMeta

• Hbesso shills MyMeta & MetaGame to prof. Dr. Evrim Tan, a core member of the European Blockchain Service Infrastructure (EBSI) building blockchain infrastructure for the EU.

• Anna continues shilling MetaGame on twitter

• Evo256 plants MetaGame as an easter egg in Filecoin’s art NFT space

• HBesso & Anna put together a proposal for collaborating with the Blockchain Academy Mexico

• Hbesso writes a proposal & a plan for becoming a Headhunting champion

• Musashi13 throws the MVMF event and & puts on MetaGame as the only sponsor right under the live stream for 72+ hrs of the high traffic event

• taekikz shills us in another issue of the Shots Fired newsletter

• peth kicks off the Rainmakers & Bridgebuilders Guilds

• peth writes a grant proposal for the Moloch DAO

🐙 Onwards!

The tl;dr of the newsletter is basically:

• If something is bothering you about MetaGame or it’s participants, let us know

• MetaGame is moving slow & frustrating newcoming builders, so we’re raising $

• Buy the MetaManifesto or enter the fundraise by contacting @petheth

• Take on one of the open roles or quests

• Join The 300 of MetaGame if you haven’t already 🙃

The weekly schedule moves on with a few changes & in case you haven’t noticed, each Community Gathering now has 2 interesting guests or projects, so stop missing out!

Much love,
peth