View source for Application ideas for GoodDollar

Ideas for applications that would use G$ and help push G$ use, reserve, and staking.

== Persistent-state multiplayer game with a wide range of prices for virtual world items ==

The idea is to develop a persistent-state ("massively multiplayer") virtual world of some kind and allow each player to deposit their G$ into their game account. The G$ *is* the in-game currency.

The game is not necessarily a "blockchain game." In fact, that's entirely unnecessary. It can use traditional, centralized multiplayer game technology. Thus the G$ in-game is a deposited G$ and the game itself acts as a sort of centralized exchange, where the G$ is traded in and out of virtual world items. All the game needs w.r.t. blockchain is a G$ deposit and withdrawal mechanism from/to FUSE and/or Ethereum.

G$ could also be spent permanently on things in the game world that can't be traded.

The actual type of game world does not matter. It can be any genre of persistent-state game; it can use 3D technology or be a 2D game, or it can be mostly background images, sprites and storytelling, or it could even be text-based, like a MUD. It could be some space adventure a la Eve Online, or it could be some medieval-fantasy game, or something else entirely. The interface and the genres of interactivity are not the core of the idea.

=== Here is why this may be more than an "OK, cool" idea: ===

Background: I do not know what the G$/USD exchange rate is or could look like as the years go by and the G$ project evolves. I don't know what happens if some people buy G$ from the reserve but nobody stakes, or if there's a massive adoption of the wallet and of claiming, but there's no staking and nobody donates to the reserves. Maybe the G$/USD price goes up, or maybe it stays flat, or maybe it falls to 0.000001 USD. I don't know, so I am going to assume the present system state, which allows you to buy millions of G$ with some hundreds of USD, and that claiming is going to be anywhere from 1 G$ to e.g. 1,000 G$ per day.

If that's the case, what you have is a game where some players are playing "nearly-free game avatars," i.e., they are depositing a small amount of G$ that they earn from claiming, to various levels of "paying game avatars," which are those who are depositing 10,000, 100,000, 1 million, 10 million, 100 million or 1 billion G$ into the game.

So my idea is to *use* this in the game. In fact it would be probably the first game to take advantage of extreme inequality in character power. The idea is to take that inequality and turn it into both a game design feature and a social feature.

See, this is the first time where the unequal player is not recognized, but admired. A player with a massive G$ stake is a philanthropist. Everyone who plays the game knows exactly, or will know exactly, what G$ is, and what its aim is: to solve world poverty. And the development of the game is a way to give people an excuse to become G$ supporters -- either as claimers, or as philanthropists. The game allows G$ owners to spend radically different amounts of G$ to obtain exponential in-game rewards.

Now, how to actually design a fun and playable game around players who have millions of times more power than the average player?

Simple: take the avatars of the most powerful players, and integrate them into the story. 

In fact, I would invest in a very simple kind of game, with retro graphics, maybe even focus on static graphics, and actually invest more in fiction writers -- people who can write in-game lore.

So the game is a giant soap-opera, and the game is actually created and recreated as more players join the world and invest different amounts of G$. Maybe the game changes radically from "season to season". Give the writers the distribution of wealth among the avatars, and let them loose to write the interactive show as they see fit. Let the amount of G$ flowing into the game world inform the direction of the game and of the story.

I'm imagining like a space theme, where the top players are emperors of entire solar systems. Their interaction with the game uses a dedicated governmental interface. Maybe they control massive fleets, but those have political consequences that direct affect the storytelling, and if they mismanage that power the writers can create events for their downfall. Whereas other avatars may be regular dwellers that may or may not own a small ship etc. Like it is in Eve Online (which I never played, but I've watched some videos about it).

So the game is an opportunity to attract a handful of very enthusiastic people who have resources to acquire a large G$ stake. And best of all, everyone knows that this "pay to win" game is for a charity of global reach that is actually aiming to solve poverty, and so it is a legitimate "pay to win". We accept it because our ultimate goal The "pay to decide the scale of your role in the game" integrates naturally, as the avatars who have exponential power will not be just "bullies," but actually sort of indirect "GMs" in the story; their actions and what they can do are mediated by the game designers and the game writers. The powerful avatars shape the world in which the smaller avatars play; they do not actually engage directly, most of the time.

=== More about the game ===

I'm thinking that whatever the game theme or setting is, it would, maybe, benefit from the G$ deposited would be converted into e.g. some amount of a magic substance, instead of it being a currency. The advantage is that it's easier to manipulate the quantities of a magic substance than to have to come up with an abstraction that is expected to behave like a currency and to behave like one.

One interesting design would be a game that is based on collectibles, like Collectible Card Games (CCGs) like Faeria and Hearthstone and Magic The Gathering and many others. Maybe the asymmetry in deposited G$ can be reflected in the ability of e.g. purchasing rare cards. It would also be interesting if there was a game where the interaction is through cards, e.g. like a CCG, but the CCG is just an activity; a replacement for "combat" that is so overused in games. So there's a meta-game, where there's a story about the carriers of the most powerful cards; where tournaments decide who takes what piece of land or territory etc. Which is where the meta-narrative about the avatars who invest the largest amounts of G$ takes place.

=== Execution ===

Such a game, if done right, would probably win some awards in game design innovation.

This idea could be donated to existing game studios, to game designers. GoodDollar would offer them all the support they need to implement the G$ gateway, but they would do it themselves. I have no idea how to fund or manage this. But it seems this could be either an indie project or a massive project.

This idea does not make as much sense for other Crypto UBI projects. This idea is specific to GoodDollar and it is inspired in its current system state. And perhaps it would be a core mechanism in evolving that system state.