Why Prelüde

TLDR: Game assets in the web3 space generally appreciate over the first three weeks, then crash in value, some up to 98+%, because their growth is largely based on hype instead of economic fundamentals. This is the antithesis of what we are looking to achieve. Prelüde runs for 5 months, and we want to test how sustainable the economy is over that period, before we shut it down for analysis.

Origins

While Arrivant continues to work on our flagship game StarGarden, why have we also decided to create Prelüde?

The promise of web3, and especially web3 gaming in particular, is this “holy grail” event where a sustainable economy can be designed and deployed that benefits all participants. If you can create the technology for this, then you have a solid foundation for building not just games but a global Metaverse. This has never been successfully deployed in web3, or even in the “real” global economy which is based on weak design that crashes like clockwork every 15 to 20 years. Granted, our current economy is largely based on the work of Adam Smith who explained how to optimize it in the 18th Century. A lot of things have changed in the last 250 years that Mr. Smith could not have anticipated, and a massive amount of technology has been deployed to break his design. The “crashes” you see repeatedly are typically caused by groups attacking these known exploits.

What about EVE Online you might ask, isn’t that a sustainable economy? It’s been around now for almost 20 years and keeps going? Our co-founder and game economist, Ramin Shokrizade, was an alpha tester for EVE and he delivered a detailed “problem and solution” document to CCP a week after the launch of EVE, in person to CCP founders in 2003. One of the three key remedies was what would now be called a “Land Value Tax”. It worked, saving the EVE economy, and in the process Shokrizade is credited with having proven (without him knowing it at the time) a key element of Georgian Economics.

The problem with applying Georgian Economics to “land” in games is that an LVT lowers the value of that land to intentionally make it unattractive to hold. Thus this lowers the value of land and makes it more accessible, and removes the incentive to speculate on that land. But in gaming, presumably a developer that has land in their game wants to sell that land, and reducing the value of that land would likely not make for a practical business model. Further, it might not be so practical for real space applications of land.

In the last 20 years, Shokrizade has developed a much more advanced economic model for gaming that utilizes blockchain technology, which he publicly predicted would be a thing back in 2010.

Here at Arrivant, we design around the sustainability of our economy and think it is important to test our models at smaller scales before large scale deployment. Testing at a smaller scale allows us to make adjustments and learn in a more low risk setting before implementing it within a global product.

This is what we are doing with Prelüde. In addition to giving a sneak peak at the rich lore of the world of StarGarden, its artwork, and some key game elements, this will act as a “first run” of a simplified version of our economy for StarGarden. To participate in Prelüde you will need a creature in your inventory. We have already given out over 6000 creatures for free to our community and will make more available for purchase at a nominal price to discourage bot activity. Further, the ingredient earnings start off slow and increase fairly linearly over five months, a pattern which will likely be more attractive to humans than to bots. We want good data, and the anti-bot systems in the larger StarGarden game are significantly more robust. Without these systems, a “sustainable economy” would be populated by bots until it was no longer sustainable. “

Prelüde can be seen as a preparation for players who will have the opportunity to craft items and rewards that will give an advantage to the player and their team in how fast they progress through StarGarden. What you can’t get (from any source) are things that will give you an advantage in battle against other tribes. This would be unfair within the parameters of the asymmetrical matchmaker and we don’t sell those sorts of items.