Creating Rarity within NFT Gaming
Participating in a game with unique pieces that fit your own style of gameplay brings a new level to the dynamics of NFT rarity. With DUO I had to think about some core long term pillars to establish a model of rarity over time that encourages new players to participate, allows for expansion, creates clear moments of ownership over time based on how early / often you start participating in our community!
Before we get started — Here is your invite into the Discord server — where all our community conversations and pre-alpha gameplay is happening!
DUO Fundamentals — Collections, Decks, Packs, Cards
There is an intentional hierarchy to DUO as we refine core gameplay mechanics via pre-alpha (current), Alpha End of Q2 ‘22, [maybe Beta], Full Public release.
Collections are the top of this hierarchy — they may feel similar to seasons in competitive gaming or time based groups of Decks, the first collection will be the 2021 Collection
Decks are the next group down, they are made up of themes or collaborations with our players, partners, and events in the ecosystem. The first NFT’s to be minted into the Duo ecosystem will form the Genesis Deck
Packs are groups of cards and are essentially combinations of each type of our NFT’s (Black or Color cards). With the Genesis Deck, players will be able to purchase a Pack of Color cards (10 cards per pack) and/or individual Black Cards.
Cards form the final part of this hierarchy. Each card is itself an NFT of which there are two categories, Color Cards and Black Cards. Black Cards are the rarer of the two and are dispersed with a 1:10 ratio to Color Cards. The Black Cards are considered “prompts” to which players must respond with “punchlines” which are denoted by the Color Cards.
An example of (future) game play; 1 player will place 1 Black Card and the other players will each respond with a Color Card. The winner of the round is decided by the player that plays the Black Card. The Color Card that wins will earn tokens as a reward and the owner of the Black Card will in-turn receive a small-reward for having completed the round. **Note that gameplay is not completed and there are many details we are still modelling to take into Alpha gameplay. We hope to publish an open source paper with our models of n-player uncertainty game theory + tokenomics**
Rarity across game pieces to support large user base
Utility in NFT’s creates a unique function of value that exponentially scales over time with the number of interactions.
In order to ensure future scalability of the Genesis Deck, the design of the NFTs are engineered to produce cards that have a high variability in the content. This ensures that the NFTs remain playable and valuable as the user base grows.
For this reason the Genesis Deck is includes several steps to create variability in cards while offering opportunity for longer term gameplay uses with early pieces:
Step 1. Generate Primary Text & Card #: For each NFT this represents a large part of gameplay. The value of the cards are not determined by the content depicted thereon alone, instead the value may change due to gameplay. The “prompts” depicted on the Black Cards may become popular amongst players with a specific sense of humor, so too certain Color Cards may become more valuable due to their versatility in matching appropriately with many Black Cards. Since gameplay will span thousands of users, 9 Black cards with the same “prompt” and 45 Color cards with the same “punchline” will be generated. The cards will however be uniquely identified with a mint number (i.e. #5/45 vs #35/45).
Using our example card illustration above:
- 5,000 Black Cards in the Genesis Deck - 9 total will contain the text: “What gives me uncontrollable gas?”
- 50,000 Color Cards in the Genesis Deck - 45 total will contain the text: “Ethereum”
Step 2. Determine Humor Type:
The Color of the color cards is determined by the humor contained in the content. The classification of humor type by color allows for cards of a particular humor to be quickly discernible from other cards which may contain different humor. The classification of the humor may become an important aspect of Competitive Play as certain humor types are more compatible with one another.
Here are the 7 Humor Archetypes:
- 1. Indigo — Anti-Humor — Used to be intentionally not-funny or nonsensical.
- 2. Light Blue — Witty Humor — Refers to humor with dry punch lines, puns, dad jokes, etc.
- 3. Violet — Risqué Humor — Refers to humor with a clear sexual reference or implication to sexual innuendo.
- 4. Green — Family Friendly Humor — A neutral category which doesn’t contain offensive language or fit into another archetypes.
- 5. Yellow — Cringe Humor — Refers to inappropriate humor which often embarrasses the player compared to the audience.
- 6. Orange — Aggressive Humor — Typically detrimental to the sentiments of others by igniting criticism and ridicule through the offensive jokes on subjects like racism, sexism or anything hurtful, differs from blue humor or dark comedy as it inclines more towards offending people than being humorous — also known as Shock Humor
- 7. Light Red — Dark Humor — Deals with adult topics, drugs, violence, war, gore, usually in an unsuspecting and non offensive manner.
Once a classification has been applied, this is taken into account with the % of that Humor Type that exists across a Deck, Collection, and the entire pool of DUO NFT’s. (For example: In the future there may only be 9.23% of all cards that are Cringe Humor category while there might be 12.11% in the Genesis Deck.)
Step 3. Gradient Rarity:
Part of the visuals for the Color Cards are the clear color differences between Humor Types, but then also a Gradient applied to Rare and Super Rare cards, while Common cards keep a single color.
For the Black Cards, we use a gradient border for Rare and Super Rare classifications.
Below you can see the Common (1 color), Rare (2 color gradient), Super Rare (multi color gradient) versions of each Color Card as well as the Black Card Common (Black) and the Rare/Super Rare versions (Border Gradient).
These colors are grouped in their Humor Types (vertical columns) to quickly be able to determine what type of Card you have.
Step 4. Signature Touch:
The final step is to randomly apply a unique Signature to a small subset of cards taken from the entire Genesis Deck. These signatures represent the collaboration efforts from key community members, partners, or special occasions. Signatures are the ultimate form of rarity. Only 0.909% of the Genesis deck (500 of 55,000) will contain a “ags” signature.
Finally once all this has been done and minted, we can build a rarity chart to show the true outcome of the NFT you end up holding. Since launch creates a nuance of randomness that we can’t predict fully, all sorts of crazy outcomes are possible. (I’m a math major, so maybe I spelled something wrong… 👀) Regardless, all the Genesis Deck NFT’s will have exclusive Alpha gameplay access as well as be the first Social NFT Game pieces created. Ever.
We hope you join us for this experiment & adventure!
-Jason Toevs | DUO Founder
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The DUO: Genesis Deck launches October 23rd at 1600 UTC and you can read more about the project on their website: https://www.getduo.gg
For business inquiries: info@getduo.gg
