Connecting Tabletop Games & Cardano

[IMPACT]

We have already developed and tested our first physical card game called Captivate: Cardano Edition. 1 year was spent on game testing & card design development time. Final artwork for the game is currently in production.

Captivate: Cardano Edition will connect gamers and collectors to Cardano through:

- The theme and pop culture of the game (Cardano).

- Rare physical assets only collectable by redeeming digital FTs on the Cardano blockchain.

- Providing more information about the Cardano blockchain (Veritree, SPOs, & Cardano itself).

This proposal is to get funding for physical production of the game. If we get funded, ideally our game will ship Q1 of 2023 (largely dependent on manufacturing & shipping timelines).

If you'd like a more visual presentation, please check out our website:

https://frostloregames.com/games

*With our product, we are also working to implement and develop more sustainable manufacturing within the tabletop game industry. This is a result of our stake pool's mission to help heal the earth with GAIA Stake Pool:

https://www.gaiastakepool.com

Game Overview:

Captivate: Cardano Edition is a fast-paced tabletop card game of strategy, skill, and memory for 2-4 players. Flip over cards and capture them to score points, but watch out – your opponents have plans of their own! Featuring iconic characters from Cardano pop culture, like the "King of the Rats" himself. Combine themes or multiple decks for exciting battles, and to increase the number of players to 5+

Game Features:

Captivate is quick to learn even for a large group, but difficult to master. There are many features to keep you and your friends playing over and over again – who will come out on top?

Strategy:

Planning when to play your cards is important. Playing as many cards as possible could score you more points, and will allow you to draw more cards faster. However, this will leave your high value cards open to capture by opponents.

You can also strategically place your cards in the corners or edges of the grid so that they're more difficult to capture. Setting up your card placement strategically is also a tactic that can be used to capture your own cards on future turns.

Saving your high value cards to the end of the game is another viable strategy, but if the game ends and you still have cards in your hand, those points will count against you!

Skill:

In Captivate, the highest value card doesn't always win. The power dots on each side of a card allow for an alternate way to flip cards.

There are 4 "elements" or "suits" which determine the placement of the power dots. Each element has a different pattern of dot placement, and using your cards most efficiently is a huge advantage.

When flipping cards by comparing card value, only a played card that is higher in value will flip adjacent cards.

When flipping cards by comparing power dots, a played card that has more power dots than the cards around it will flip those cards. Also, any adjacent cards that match the played card's element will be flipped if they have the same number of power dots.

Even the lowest value card can flip the highest value card when played the right way.

Memory:

You'll need to remember which cards were flipped over to make sure you're capturing cards with the highest point value.

When cards are flipped over, they aren't always captured. If you don't have enough cards left in your hand to capture with, you'll need to leave any remaining flipped cards for future turns.

This also gives your opponents a chance to capture any remaining flipped cards, so choose carefully!

Watching which cards your opponents play can also give you an idea of what cards may be left unplayed. There are 13 cards for each of the 4 elements, so by counting cards you can use your memory to your advantage.

Pop Culture:

Each edition of Captivate is themed, and showcases many favorite characters from the popular culture of each theme. This is a great way from people of different communities to connect over pop culture they love. Captivate can be a great conversation starter or ice breaker for parties or new gaming groups!

For example, Captivate: Crytpid Edition will feature the elusive Sasquatch. When Sasquatch appears and starts flipping over cards, how will you and your friends react?

Currently we have 3 themes planned for Captivate, with Captivate: Cardano Edition being the first, but could add more themes in the future. This proposal only focuses on Captivate: Cardano Edition.

Multiplayer:

With a single deck of Captivate, you play a game with 2-4 players. Game time ranges from 10-30 minutes based on player skill and group size.

If you have a larger gaming group, or want longer and more challenging games, just add in another deck of Captivate to support a group from 5-8 players.

If you want to make the game even more exciting, you can combine 2 different Captivate editions and split into teams to see which theme will come out on top!

Packaging Details:

- Each deck of Captivate: Cardano Edition will include 52 cards inside a sealed paper tuck box.

- Decks will be packaged in display bricks for retail, and size will depend on price point, shelf space, dimensions, and weight for shipping.

Print Runs:

*We are currently exploring what options are available to us for print runs based on manufacturer pricing. These numbers are estimates only, and could be adjusted based on final price quotes.

Each print run will include marking on the packaging and the cards to indicate what print run the cards are from.

Captivate: Cardano Edition (Premium) - 1000 Decks

- This is a limited print run only available by redeeming a full set of Captivate: Cardano Edition Early Access FTs.

- These decks will feature a premium foiling option unobtainable in Captivate: Cardano Edition 1st Printing or Unlimited printings. Ideally, each premium deck will consist entirely of foiled cards.

- Through early access FTs, this is one of the ways we can on-chain gamers and collectors from the physical world and connect them to the excellent FT & NFT experience of Cardano.

*The only way to get early access FTs is by delegating to GAIA, in giveaways from our remaining supply, or on the secondary market*

FT / NFT Policy ID: 21da3b1d6db55ef771667653755af5f8c03aa9db82c2588e6da07eb7

Captivate is listed on: CNFT.io , Tokenref.com , jpg.store , ecosystem.cardanofeed.com , and cardanocube.io .

Captivate: Cardano Edition (1st Printing) - 10,000 to 40,000 Decks

- The size of the print run will depend on final price quotes from our manufacturer, but we believe there will be enough demand for this unique product to reach a 40,000 deck print run.

- We are exploring the option for a randomly inserted standard foil card inserted in these decks.

- This will be a limited print run, so whichever final print number is chosen, that will be all the decks printed in this manner.

Captivate: Cardano Edition (Unlimited Printing) ~ Decks *For plan purposes only, not part of funding request

- This will be the printing that sustains the game long term. Once the supply of Captivate: Cardano Edition (1st Printing) dries up, we will use this printing to continue the game for the foreseeable future. These decks will not include any foil cards, printing will depend on demand, and may go out of print in the future.

Prize Support:

- We are exploring the option of including promotional prize cards in the 1st Printing as a way to support official Captivate organized play for retail stores. Ideally this will be the case, but depending on cost and scheduling, this may be pushed to a later date to line up with the Unlimited Printing instead.

Distribution (Based on a 40,000 deck 1st Printing scenario):

- 1,000 Captivate: Cardano Edition (Premium) decks redeemable directly from us by holders of our early access FTs.

- 10,000 Captivate: Cardano Edition (1st Printing) decks for sale in our online store (will need to be created). Ideally we would use the Mercury plugin developed by Adam Dean so that we can also accept payment in ADA.

https://github.com/cardano-mercury/cardano-mercury-woocommerce

- 30,000 Captivate: Cardano Edition (1st Printing) decks to be sold to retailers across the world. This would also be open to any Cardano product retailers that wish to carry the game. Retailers will be able to purchase product at a discounted rate.

*10,000 - 20,000 Captivate: Cardano Edition (1st Printing) decks will be reserved for brick and mortar retailers.

*We will work with traditional distributors of tabletop and card game products for fulfillment to retailers globally.

Metrics:

Our proposal addresses the challenge of on-chaining gamers, but we are doing it in a different way. We are targeting a different sector of gamers (physical rather than digital). The demand for games is quite high in the physical games market, not just in the digital games market. Here are some stats on the tabletop game industry:

"The majority of survey respondents, 57%, own between 1 and 25 board and card games, while 22% have between 26 and 50. "

"Despite already having many games in their possession, collectors aren't showing any signs of stopping. In the past year, the majority of gamers (41%) purchased five to ten new games or expansions."

https://printninja.com/board-game-industry-statistics

During our initial talks with manufacturers, the demand for new card game and tabletop game products is so high, that 3 out of 5 of our shortlisted manufacturers are not accepting new orders at this time.

Here are the core metrics we would be measuring:

- Number of game copies sold to retailers.

- Number of game copies bought by consumers.

- Number of wallets on Cardano holding Captivate Early Access FTs.

- Number of Captivate Early Access FT sets redeemed (after release).

- Number of retailers onboarded (brick & mortar and online stores).

- Number of followers or subscribers to our social media accounts.

- Captivate organic community growth (community created content, community event participation, partnerships).

- Website traffic generated by QR code information links (after release).

Sustainability Metrics:

Long term, we are looking to create our game products in a manner that is more sustainable than what has been available in the tabletop game industry in the past.

We will work with our manufacturer to be able to achieve as many of these options over the short term as possible, and to ideally implement all of them eventually.

The goal is to maintain a superb product for collectors and players without adding additional waste. Some of these sustainable alternatives are:

- Use of as much paper as possible instead of foil or plastic.

- Paper packaging made from semi-recycled or fully recycled paper sourced from responsible forests.

- Alternative ways of offsetting environmental cost of products, like donating a portion of product sales to tree planting & plastic cleanup.

For tree planting, we would like to make donations to the Cardano Forest through Veritree from every product sold. This would add another way for gamers to connect with Cardano:

https://www.veritree.com

GAIA Stake Pool is already working with Veritree as part of the Climate Neutral Cardano Group (CNCG): https://www.climateneutralcardano.org

For plastic cleanup, we will donate to The Ocean Cleanup:

https://theoceancleanup.com

Here are the core metrics we would be measuring for sustainability:

- ADA donated to Veritree.

- Number of trees planted with Veritee.

- ADA & dollars donated to The Ocean Cleanup.

- Amount of new material used in game production.

- Amount of plastic reduced from game production (when compared to a similar product).

- Amount of recycled material used and quality of recycled material used in game production (% of pre-consumer waste, % of post-consumer waste, FSC certified).

Educating about Cardano:

We will add 3-4 information card inserts to each deck that would have further details about Veritree and the Cardano Forest, GAIA Stake Pool, and Cardano in general. These cards will also have QR codes on them to give gamers a quick way to get further information from websites.

Cardano Pop Culture:

Card artwork features many SPOs, characters, and projects from Cardano pop culture. Digital FT assets have links to the social media accounts and websites of those featured on cards.

Connecting New Audiences to Cardano:

Future Captivate editions with different themes to reach and connect different audiences together. After Captivate: Cardano Edition is complete, we have Captivate: Cryptid Edition scheduled next to tie in with our podcast "Rocky Mountain Cryptids":

https://www.rockymountaincryptids.com

We'll be able to use the podcast to advertise all our Captivate products, and connect the cryptid audience to the Cardano audience.

Our last Captivate product currently scheduled is Captivate: Fantasy Edition, which will connect the fantasy audience to the Cardano audience.

We currently also have 2 other tabletop games in our schedule to be developed and produced in the future. Ideally we can follow the same theming model as Captivate to attract players to Cardano.

These two games are an Untitled Dungeon Crawler, and an Untitled RPG Card Game. Initial theme would be focused on Cardano, and later themes would target audiences from different groups, with a way to connect all audiences together.

Further Digital Integration:

At a later stage, we could develop a Captivate Dapp for mobile, but that is beyond the scope of our current project.

We understand that gamers who'd like to play Captivate may not be able to do so in person, or would like a way to try out the game.

A solution to this would be to create a digital version of Captivate in Tabletop Simulator, available on Steam. Tabletopia is another great place to digitize Captivate, as it is available for free. These options would be something we'd likely explore after the physical version of Captivate has already been released.

https://www.tabletopsimulator.com

https://tabletopia.com/

Providing we meet all our own goals and submissions on our part, there are still some risks we could still encounter:

ILLNESS OR EMERGENCIES:

If our team suffers an illness or emergency, this could delay our productivity and overall timeline.

MANUFACTURER DELAYS

Covid has impacted production timelines already with manufacturers, so their schedule for production could be longer than we'd like. We are ultimately picking our manufacturer based on quality, reputation, and ability to fulfill our goals.

SHIPPING DELAYS

Covid has also impacted shipping timelines, and we could see delays in shipping that are out of our control.

SHIPPING DAMAGE

Some product could be damaged in shipping. Usually print runs of product are actually a bit more than the total amount, about 5-10%. This is to cover any misprinting or damage in shipping. Ideally we don't run into much of this, but we'll have a buffer to cover this, and we'll get insurance on our shipment.

DIFFFICULTY IN ONBOARDING SUPPLIERS AND RETAILERS

This is a possibility as well. Retailers may not wish to take on the product. We'll do our best to pitch our product with both the promotional videos and gameplay videos we'll have made. We'll also incentivize retailers with some kind of prize support, bulk deals, and promotional materials for their stores to help advertise the game.

Worst case, we have to pivot to online sales and working with existing Cardano supporters to get our game into the hands of gamers. We'd prefer to onboard brick and mortar stores & traditional distributors to build a relationship, but as we've seen with successful Kickstarter projects, this isn't a necessity.

Thankfully right now there is a big demand for new tabletop games and card games, and there is currently more interest in trying new things in this market. There are also many features to help Captivate sell from a practical standpoint:

– It is a small box game, so doesn't take up much retail shelf space.

– It will have a very reasonable retail price point, as it is a basic poker style tuck box product.

– It is portable, so easy for players to take with them.

– Product is easily shippable due to low weight of an individual deck, so very low shipping costs for online retail.

[FEASIBILITY]

Roadmap (Estimated):

Complete: Game Testing, Card Design

In Progress: Card Artwork, Discussions with Manufacturer

In Queue: Packaging Artwork & Design, Discussions with Distributors & Retailers

Q1 2022:

Create final card artwork (cards 1-12).

Work with manufacturer to see how our game can come to life, and how our future goals can be accomplished.

Determine what a realistic possible physical ship date could be, as the pandemic has bottlenecked manufacturing & distribution across the world.

Determine what additional resources may be required on our part (deposits, additional art files for production of foil cards, etc.).

Develop our social media presence (Twitter, Instagram, Discord, Twitch), and continue to do this each quarter.

Q2 2022:

Create final card artwork (cards 13-36).

Packaging design.

Rulebook design Part 1.

Design of card information inserts for more info on: Veritree, Cardano, and GAIA Stake Pool.

Q3 2022:

Create final card artwork (cards 37-52).

Rulebook design Part 2.

Submit final artwork to manufacturer.

Get 1st test sample prints for review.

Create promotional video & instructional gameplay video (hired professional).

Contact retailers & distributers about the game (after videos are produced).

Q4 2022:

Continue to contact retailers & distributers about the game.

Make any changes from test sample prints & submit new files.

Design & submit any further required art files (foiling, final print files, etc.).

Get 2nd test sample prints for review.

Q1 2023:

Make any final changes & submit final files for printing.

Print Premium & 1st Printing versions of Captivate: Cardano Edition.

Create online store on website for selling game and accepting payment in ADA (Mercury Plugin).

Ship game to retailers.

Q2 2023:

Begin organized play with retailers.

Begin further advertising (conventions, events, etc.).

Start digitizing Captivate for Tabletop Simulator and Tabletopia.

Start looking into accessory production (sleeves, playmats, merchandise, etc.).

Start developing Captivate: Cryptid Edtion.

Budget (Estimated):

Manufacturing & Production Costs: $45,000

Shipping & Distribution: $5,000

Marketing: $5,000

Legal: $5,000

Total: $60,000 + Tax (5%) = $63,000

Brian Lee - Focuses on Game Art & Design

Brian has been drawing and creating since childhood, and has 29 years of experience with creating art. He graduated from the University of Alberta in 2010 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a major in Art & Design (5 year degree).

Brian worked as a designer at Art Attack International for 5 years, creating concept art and designing props & layouts for mini golf courses and laser tag arenas. In 2019, Brian took over as art director for two years, before moving on to work as the operator of GAIA Stake Pool full time in 2021.

Aside from his love of art, Brian has also been playing tabletop games and video games for about 29 years, and sees himself doing this well into his senior years in the far future. Some of his favorites are: Magic: The Gathering, Dungeons & Dragons, Pokémon, and Diablo 2: Resurrected.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-lee-97478964

Lisa Lee - Focuses on Game Testing, Promotion, and Critical Feedback

Lisa is an avid tabletop gamer and video gamer, and has also been playing games since childhood. With 24 years of gaming experience and a headstrong attitude, Lisa isn't afraid to give honest and necessary feedback to improve game design.

Aside from a love of games, Lisa also has a passion for the outdoors and nature, and does a great job of ensuring good work-life balance and time management.

Barista and shift supervisor by day, Lisa is also a co-founder of GAIA Stake Pool, and co-creator of the Rocky Mountain Cryptids podcast. Some of her favorite games are: Until Dawn, The Game of Things, Pokémon, and Red Dead Redemption 2.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-lee-9822821aa

[AUDITABILITY]

We have a roadmap on our website to show our progress:

https://frostloregames.com/roadmap

As well as a card gallery:

https://frostloregames.com/card-gallery

Overall progress will be measured by how closely we follow our estimated roadmap. Key milestones to track would be the completion and release of artwork for cards 13-36 in our card gallery by end of Q2 2022, and for cards 37-52 by end of Q3 2022.

We are happy to submit receipts to Project Catalyst auditors to prove the expenses incurred by the project are legitimate, and match closely to our estimated budget.

Success for completing the project is that we accomplish our roadmap goals by the outlined dates. There is some flexibility for moving things around in this timeline if needed, but ideally we meet all goals as planned.

Success for connecting to physical retailers would be the onboarding of at least 10 brick and mortar stores in 2 or more countries.

Success for connecting to digital retailers would be the onboarding of at least 5 online retailers in 2 or more countries.

Success for game distribution would be at least 1/2 of all physical product produced is purchased by physical and digital retailers.

Success for connecting to gamers would be at least 3/4 of all physical product provided by retailers is purchased by gamers.

This proposal was successfully voted for in Fund7, but funding ran out before reaching this project. We're resubmitting the proposal for Fund8.

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/384400

Since we are now further along in the process, our proposal has been adjusted. After receiving initial estimates, we found out our budget was set too low to cover manufacturing and production costs, and this has also been adjusted. To reduce costs in other areas, we'll be designing the game packaging ourselves instead of outsourcing this.

SDG Rating

Cardano as a project focuses on resolving economic, social, and environmental issues. This project works to address six of the UN Sustainable Development Goals:

GOAL 6: Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all

GOAL 9: Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation

GOAL 12: Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns

GOAL 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts

GOAL 14: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development

GOAL 15: Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss

To learn more about SDGs, the Cardano Community has created a great SDG tool to help link your Catalyst proposal to these goals:

https://cardanocataly.st/proposer-tool-sdg/#