State of The Tomb: Post-Mint
Reflecting Back & Striving Forward
Hello everyone! It’s-a-me, your co-founder Hack. Now that the dust has settled from minting, we want to take the opportunity to properly reflect and speak with our community.
Reflecting
Minting: Our Takeaway
Let’s address the elephant in the room: our minting. We set out to be the first ever Omnichain gaming NFT project and our minting was unprecedented in numerous ways, so we are very proud of what we’ve created! Although, as the founders and builders of WeSeeGhosts, we have to be honest with ourselves and own up to the simple truth that our launch was not as smooth as we had hoped it to be.
Only when we dive deeper into the troubles and mistakes, can we reflect and hold ourselves accountable for the future of WeSeeGhosts. If we’re going to make mistakes, we should, at the very least, identify and address where exactly we went wrong.
In the face of current circumstances, we saw our minting as a great, yet humble success. As we pioneer a way forward with this new Omnichain technology, we thank you for your continued support. There are areas where we fell short and failed to meet your expectations as well as our own.
- Communication: In consideration of our community’s time and sanity, we should only give hard deadlines in the face of 100% certainty. If we are to say something will happen at a certain date or time, it should happen at that date and time. We apologize for our shortcomings in this regard. (SPIRIT has been sent out to our patient Ghost Whisperering Geists!)
- Playtesting: Given the nature of our project and mint, we should have allowed time for more internal testing and troubleshooting before we went live. This was a hard pill to swallow for us and a harsh, but fair, lesson as we move forward. WeSeeGhosts is not a typical NFT project, and thus requires more oversight and consideration. This is the only way for us to ensure the best experience for our players.
Without making excuses and making this article 4000 words long, we aim to use our mistakes as learning opportunities. We’ll ingrain these missteps so that we may correct our path as we move forward. Though they were regrettable, we are grateful for these mistakes so that we may learn and grow.
Despite the unfortunate delays and the less-than-ideal market conditions, you all still rose to the occasion! Words are not enough to describe how appreciative Leo and I are for those of you who stuck with us as we maneuvered our way through technical issues all the way to the finish line (I’m sure our Ghosts feel the same)! Given what we were set out to accomplish and the circumstances at hand, we are very happy to welcome our first fleet of Geists and their 280 ghostly companions!
Recalibrating
Funding Goals
Now that we’ve reflected on the minting experience, we can now speak directly to the outcomes and implications from our mint.
When WeSeeGhosts was originally conceptualized, we had planned our project around a supply of 8,888 Ghosts which was adjusted to a supply of 1,111 after gauging market conditions and other factors.
In a 48h window, around 280 Ghosts were minted which is ~3% of our original supply and ~25% of our adjusted supply. While we are very grateful for every individual ghost summoned, it is apparent we failed to meet our funding goals by a rather substantial margin.
As a self-funded project, this directly impacts the resources available to our teams as well as the size of our teams. Fortunately, we’ve already discussed internally what WeSeeGhosts’ future would look like in the possibility that minting should not turn out favorably.
Supporting Titles and Flagship Game
We currently have three titles in various stages of development: Grave Run (demo), Mausoleum Madness (P2M), and Ghost Draft (P2E, working title). Our plan is to first re-release Grave Run along with a host of new updates and fixes.
Following up with that, we wish to re-release the P2M minting experience as Mausoleum Madness along with new features, updates, and tweaks. Contests and community events will accompany both re-releases in an effort to incentivize our players to revisit the games and encourage new players to take on the challenge(s).
Our aim is to promote and support Grave Run and Mausoleum Madness as our supporting titles. The goal here is to facilitate the simultaneous development of our flagship title, the Ghost Draft P2E game.
Community Focus
When faced with obstacles and adversity, it is easy to fade away into silence and obscurity. However, we’ve labeled ourselves as a community-driven project and now is not the time to turn our backs on that. In fact, it is time to double-down.
As we navigate the path forwards, I believe it is only right that we welcome our community into the driver’s seat. Although WeSeeGhosts is a passion project from Leo and I, we also believe that we’ve managed to build a community of individuals who are just as passionate about what we’re building as we are. Moving forward, we’d like to honor that by really giving our community a voice and empowering them to make decisions on behalf of the project. We want this to be an ambitious voice not stifled by technical limitations or practicality, let us worry about that. Let your imaginations run wild!
For instance:
- What features of the P2E game are most important to you? Finance mechanics (Staking) or game mechanics (Combat)?
- What rewards would you like to see sold in Grimm’s Shop? Add a backstory to your ghost? Custom traits?
- Would you like to see Grave Run on mobile devices? Should this be made a priority?
- What chains and/or marketplaces should we prioritize supporting next?
These are just example questions to get your ideas spinning. We’ll be sending out a Community Interest & Suggestions survey in the coming days so we can hear from you all! Prepare your thoughts and ideas!
The Road Moving Forward
Taking all of this into account, where is WeSeeGhosts headed next? Up until this point, I would have described ourselves as sprinting towards minting. Now that we are post-mint, I believe it is best to catch our breath and transition from a sprint into a marathon.
In an effort to show that we are committed to righting our wrongs, we will be reviewing and reassessing our Roadmap in accordance with our current situation and community feedback.
To make it abundantly clear: we are still dedicated and committed to every milestone/release on our Roadmap. However, Our Roadmap was originally created when we had a supply of 8,888 Ghosts in mind, so we believe our situation calls for us to reassess our plans in order to provide our community with a clearer picture of what to expect 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, down the line.
We will assess this internally and will release an updated Roadmap in the days to come. Until then, I will summarize our primary objectives that we are currently focused on:
- Re-releasing Grave Run and Mausoleum Madness with gameplay and leaderboard updates
- Launch the alpha build of our P2E title with Staking and Haunting functionality
- Providing in-house tools such as a Rarity Checker and Traversing
- Collecting and incorporating community input/feedback into various aspects of the project
In addition to this article, Leo and I will be hosting an AMA session in order to hear from our community, address any questions, and provide further insight into our decision-making thought process. Please stay tuned for a future announcement.
:’)
For the past 11 months, Leo and I have been pouring ourselves and our passions into this project. Although our first mint launch experience could have been much, much smoother, we are super glad to welcome our first Ghosts & Geists as this marks the beginning of our journey.
As always, we appreciate your support, patience, and understanding! As a creator, there is no better feeling than seeing your creations be brought to life. We have many plans for WeSeeGhosts in store, including more games, collections, and utility. We are very excited to have you all join us on our journey!
-Hack
