Last updated 2 years ago
Millions of people are excluded from invaluable learning material and business opportunity due to their location, language or infrastructure
A Game-based learning platform where local cultural hubs are formed. This connects people to collaboratively learn, teach and work together.
This is the total amount allocated to Play-to-learn-and-earn DID-Platform.
We are utilizing Atala PRISM DID's to log into the platform, grant in-game rights and proof proficiencies via Verified Credentials. The system is designed for users to engage in meaningful collaborations, building worlds and content together. It also provides easy ways to find peers for study and work. In building our own ecosystem, community collaboration and educational materials, we will substantially grow Cardano's and Atala PRISM's user-base, network-utility, network-value & ADA circulation.
Over the last 40 years, there is growing interest in making education more engaging, self-motivated and comprehensive through the use of digital games, often called "serious games". This trend breaks with the common understanding of "game", "play" as a waste of time, opposed to "work" and "study" for achieving meaningful things in your life through hardship.
Our platform is a low poly 3D-MMO-Sandbox-World, where you can learn and explore a language controlling your avatar. The in-game currency is a native token which fuels the system. We are redistributing all revenue streams of the platform into a treasury via smart contracts, swapping everything to ADA and ensuring an exchange rate of our token to ADA. In doing so, we provide further value and utility to all our students and contributors.
MMO-Games are ideal interactive learning environments, rewarding meaningful participation while being immersed into a subject. They provide a deep and rich context of ambiguous variety by inviting you to explore a narrative world full of wonders. Games promote creative problem-solving and critical thinking. They are clearly structured through space and checkpoints, highlighting your progress and what may lie ahead of you. You have the freedom to choose the direction and progress in your own speed. You are allowed to experiment and fail in a safe, welcoming and guided environment, supporting you to try again and eventually succeed. Finally, games are direct feedback loops, giving you important information and assessing your actions.
Effective learning needs to be fun and contextualized to be memorable!
We are learning best through embodied experience, not by merely reading and hearing about it in a non-related setting. To learn how to use a language, surely you need to listen, but you also need to talk, communicate and make it your own.
We invite you to explore, experiment, collaborate, create and craft to understand!
"The limits of my language means the limits of my world". Friedrich Wittgenstein, philosopher
"Language is about being able to converse with people, to see beyond cultural boundaries and find a shared humanity". Timothy Doner, super-polyglot
We firmly believe that language proficiency is one of the most crucial factors to overcome national and cultural limitations, collaborate with one another and push self-determined development.
Therefore, we are focusing on language learning first, with the possibility to scale to every educational field.
We've been thinking about what might be the most-needed languages for the Cardano ecosystem.
We think these are:
English, Arabic, Japanese, Amharic and Oromo, Swahili, Spanish, French, Russian, Mandarin and Hindi.
Why choose these languages as our starting point?
Each language has their own local community and in-game territory, where only the language is used. In there, you have a city, thriving with other players, NPC's and activities/quests. These cities are community hubs, built and sustained by the local community. These locals are composed of the native and proficient speakers, which can prove so by Verified Credentials.
A vital part of our concept is communication. You can invite other players to talk with you, join guilds, work on jobs and solve team-quests together. With this, the tedious search for a tandem or peer to practice your chosen language is becoming obsolete.
Outside the city, you have the level grounds, where further community-made levels and adventures are organized.
Content, e.g. lessons, quests and levels, is curated by several independent DAOs, one for each topic/language. You gain the right to contribute to a subject and join the corresponding DAO by proving your proficiency via an existing Verified Credential, stored on Atala PRISM (e.g. be a native speaker). The other option is to play through the existing content of that subject, reaching a high level in it and mastering the language on the way. You then become eligible to take a standardized test and earn a Verified Credential, which we issue to your Atala PRISM DID.
To add a new subject/language, you need to gather an initial founding team of dedicated professionals. These are representive for the ground level work of the new subject, so it must be ensured that the team is sufficiently diverse. These will implement and create basic narration, functionalities and standard content for the new subject, building a solid foundation for the community to grow.
Blockchain-specific parts:
NFTs are used to represent and identify every item and level in the game. NFTs for items and collectibles can be traded via an integrated NFT marketplace. These include collectibles, mounts, etc..
We will use Plutus Smart Contracts to handle the treasury and exchange rate of our Native token to ADA (Mini-DEX). They also enable users to monetize their services and sell products.
We store levels and areas in transaction metadata by serializing their construction information into JSON.
We are building an intuitive procedural-modeling 3D level editor to create your own ideas, implement various blueprints and best-practices.
We created a distinct proposal for the level editor, which you can find here:
https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/3D-Level-editor-for-game-devs/367171-48088
We have a whole set of competitive edges:
Why do we need DID's and how will this drive mass-adoption of Atala PRISM?
We plan to scale the platform for VR-usage and eventually all fields of education.
We want to host the platform in a decentralized way! The best solution would be to utilize a provider in the Cardano ecosystem, and if we can find one we will build on their infrastructure. Until then, we are currently looking into solutions like Akash, Filecoin and AWS. This will only matter later on, so it will be decided in the follow up proposal in Fund 7.
We are also designing a non-game interface to access learning material and mechanisms from outside the game, without the need to log in with an avatar. We do this to cater to people not willing to do so. These might still be interested in posting a job, showcasing their profession or learning vocabularies on the next train ride to work. They can still profit by our innovative and dynamic system without leaving their comfort zone.
Market:
The serious games market is highly competitive, consistently growing in double-digit %. The global gaming market had a value of around 167 billion dollars in 2020. Games like Roblox or Fortnite, that also offer user-generated content and an own in-game economy and currency, report several hundred million monthly active users. Minecraft is the most-sold video game of all time, with 238 million sold copies.
Product:
We provide one immersive and social platform to eventually all kinds of subjects, topics and professions. You can learn, teach, offer your real-life skills like translating content into different languages, or choose an in-game job that contributes to the platform.
Acquisition:
Access to educational material in an organized, sensible fashion and seamless connectivity to fellow students, peers and professionals will drive the need for our platform. We are prioritizing the development of resources helpful for Cardano's partnerships, e.g. the Ethiopian government deal, providing extra value for these early users.
Monopoly:
By expanding our user base, the platform-ecosystem grows and we also refine our developer resources and team. The more popular we get, the more people partake in shaping the future of the platform, adding subjects and topics, resulting in more levels and content being built by community and institutions alike.
Show us the money:
We are fully aware that we will need a lot of resources for a project on this scale. The core team focuses on the game framework, while local teams are formed for all eleven languages. These will be paid equally in the platform's tokens.
To start the development process, we decided to pay $1200 to each of our seven core team members for the initial six months. This is enough to at least cover basic costs of living. As we acquire more funding and partnerships, we will expand our team and hire more specialists to work for us full-time and outsource tasks. Currently, we have five core team members.
7 members * $20*60h * 4 months = $33600
We will create a follow-up proposal in Fund 7 to continue the development process.
The team:
Mike Dietrich is the founder of the platform and Educhainment, responsible for managing and driving the general development process, creating concepts and gathering collaborations. He is a first-cohort Plutus Pioneer, cultural scientist, teacher, musician, lifelong gamer and a big proponent of game-based learning.
www.educhainment.com (still in progress)
Gilles Rivière, better known as HungryProton, is a software engineer and full stack developer, mostly responsible for the platform's development of procedural 3D-tech components and integration with the level editor. His previous public work for the Godot developer community include tools like Scatter and ProtonGraph, that extend the Godot engine's design abilities and enable non destructive, procedural 3D modeling. He dedicates most of his free time to develop his own games, inspired by favourite titles like the Zelda and Nier series.
https://github.com/HungryProton
Ben Jésus Kneiphof is the co-founder of the platform, who had the initial vision and started the development process together with Mike. He is responsible for conception, visualization and public relations. He is a visual artist and design student, always learning, creating and socializing with other people.
https://www.instagram.com/bjesusk/
Julian Bauch is our UX designer and front end developer, building innovative interfaces and solving interaction problems. He holds degrees in Computer Science and Design with work experience in software development, front end design and generative art projects. Time and again inspired by possibilities, he loves to ask questions and innovate.
https://iuilan.art/
Lucca Maia takes the role of Art Director, responsible for general graphic design and media strategy. He is a visual artist and holds a degree in Social Communication and Media with long years of work experience in graphic design and art direction. He is addicted to creating and a game enthusiast.
https://www.lucartspace.com/
We strive to build a big, diverse team of engaged specialists and professionals. If you feel like you can contribute to the project in any way, please contact us!
Additionally, we are actively looking for...
Shout out to devs and language specialists for collaboration:
If you are specializing or native to one of our core set of languages, are a game/blockchain-developer, own a game-studio or just think that you can contribute to our project in whatever way, please contact us at: mr.mietrich@protonmail.com
We are willing to merge with other teams wanting to address similar problems!
Roadmap:
One month: Hire the rest of core team. Create visual identity and marketing structure. Get partnerships with native speaker communities, organizations and language teachers.
Three months: Form founding teams for each of the elven languages to create and localise content. Further market analysis and research. Design guidelines for contextualized, game-based learning.
Six months: Design blueprints, standard content, narration and main quests for language learning up to A1/A2 level in all language teams. Connect with level editor framework and roll out test net.
Twelve to eighteen months: Further content creation, reiterate and refine. Roll out beta version, public launch.
IP:
We will make every part of the platform and every line of code open source (MIT), modularized and accessible to the community, bringing the most value to the ecosystem. We want to create resources for everyone to achieve great things together.
What does success look like?
We created a diverse ecosystem of mutual knowledge and skill sharing, crossing cultural boundaries and privileges. People can connect and work together on collaboratively building a better future for everyone inside and outside the Cardano ecosystem.
Partnerships:
We are in the process of gathering as many partnerships as required for a project on this scale.
Some of the institutions we are reaching out to are...
NB: Monthly reporting was deprecated from January 2024 and replaced fully by the Milestones Program framework. Learn more here
Interface/UX Design, Full-Stack-Dev, Front-End-Dev, Plutus Pioneer, CS, Sound/Generative Artists, Procedural Modeling, Cultural Scientist