Topic: Crypto Kingdom - 1991 Retro Virtual World(City) - page 62. (Read 632672 times)

Yes, it is the choice #1 in the list of 5 possible choices so far.

My question is why couldn't the game just 'resume' instead of 'reset' until the Clans version is developed?

Also, to repeat, as it was claimed already by risto, finances are a secondary issue, as proved already, investments in this game are relatively easy to get, what we need more is activity  
An active community 

Btw


Isn't this 120k?  

46+82-8= 120  

Got it and will comment on a few relevant points:

03:23 < Crichton__> where is the development discussion happening?

https://cryptokingdom.slack.com/messages/ck-dev/

03:54 < Crichton__> the game has merit, it's just seems to have lost its direction atm

It has not lost the direction. The issue is - the chosen direction requires sacrifice, and after XMR has already risen, will we get enough people to participate?

03:57 < sphericon> since the game is denominated in XMR, wouldn't it be at the exact same state it was 6 months ago?
03:58 < sphericon> it's not like the treasury of the town was converted from XMR to BTC, it has gained as well
03:59 < Crichton__> depends how much xmr was leaving the game for costs

During the pause, PJ has been employed. His salary up until 20.July (approx) was paid before the pause. The rest remains unpaid but is easy to pay with the windfall valuation of the Town assets.

03:59 < ArticMine> No because the value of the game lies in its play by the users. This is effectively denominated in fiat in this case EUR
04:00 < ArticMine> XBT is totally irrelevant here

Correct.

04:06 < ArticMine> The pause would only have worked if XMR / EUR had fallen. Even then there is a loss of value in terms of EUR let alone XMR

Pause was not a gamble. Just needed rest after the gamble.

04:12 < Crichton__> we know the problem--what's the solution? If the XMR market dips, that would be a nice time to re-open the doors
04:12 < luigi1112> I'm not sure what option there is besides bloodbath
04:12 < luigi1112> The least bloodbathy option I suppose
04:13 < ArticMine> There are two issues. 1) For some game assets (in particular CK gold, collectibles and land) in order to retain their
                   value in terms of XMR, the game would need to grow at least as fast as the XMR / EUR rate.

Long term, the reason to have a game is that it would grow faster than XMR/EUR, so you are exactly correct.

04:13 < luigi1112> Most assets are going to violently crash priced in xmr
04:14 < luigi1112> Which clearly hasn't happened

The game is paused, so they have not realised their new values. But the adjustment is mentally priced in for sure, and I don't think there is reason to worry about it. Markets gonna market.

04:15 < ArticMine> Consumable assets particularly those that are consumed by the commoners say for example CAN, MEAT, VEG, etc would have to
                   keep a constant value in EUR
04:15 < luigi1112> Yes those would devalue by 90% sfyl

Town Council decides the parameter that is a direct or indirect cause for this to happen, and it has historically been selected based on XMR/fiat rate.

04:19 < luigi1112> Well selling hodl doesn't raise funds. We'd need some for ico, which already happened with ckg I guess.
04:20 < luigi1112> We could revolt and take the king's gold I suppose.

In this universe with Town Council setting the rules, it is not possible to increase the quantity of gold nor steal gold from anyone. It is possible to make a fork.

04:23 < luigi1112> And we need a plan what to do anyway

Yes, good point there. As for the plans, I will now add a 4th/5th:
1) continue asap in Ultima
2) develop Clans and continue there
3) wind down
4) fork it to ditch HM_The_King, CON, etc and continue from there
5) sell it to an industry figure business angel eg. Roger Ver

04:23 < luigi1112> All of us here have a big sunk cost (fallacy but heh), so we are motivated to make it work
04:23 < Crichton__> that's an understtement

I have the biggest one, after 2 years of full time work and having characters valued at $0.5 million minimum. The fallacy still needs to be avoided - we need to ensure we have a viable path ahead, before rushing headlong to it. And our playing field has changed a lot in a few weeks.

04:39 < Crichton__> saddam, even the mention of closing up shop puts people on edge
04:40 < saddam> i did not know anyone wanted to close up the game
04:41 < luigi1112> In the thread it was hinted
04:41 < Crichton__> HM put it on the table in BCT--though I THINK he was just being overl honest

Crichton is correct. I mentioned it for completeness' sake, and to remind that it is the default option if nothing is done. Restarting the game requires effort from others in addition to me, and the communication has indeed been weak lately.

04:45 < luigi1112> CON was quite a gamble by the town... in all honesty a real king would probably be deposed for it.

King is not in charge of the Town Hang SirJacket instead...

CON was invented to be a gamble tbh - first of all we had outlawed printing more gold, and all the gold that was in the Royal selling quota had been sold. CON would work well in any scenario where XMR declines, and in any scenario where CK grows more than XMR. These are the scenarios where CK success was deemed important. CON saved our last restart in a difficult position.

And besides we have not yet defaulted on it. Last time I checked, there was enough in Town assets to pay 26 years.

04:46 < luigi1112> But there's always a way out where there's a will :-)

Exactly.

04:47 < saddam> maybe it will turn out that luigi and dr. c now own CK
04:50 < Crichton__> HM's the majority CON holder, so I wonder what his thoughts are? And Fluffypony?

My thoughts are that CON must be honored. So when we unpause the game, we do it such that we are able to pay the CON-holders what we have promised. Breaking the promises is a lethal blow to our credibility, and restarting the game weakly, also does not help anyone nor is it fun.

04:53 < Crichton__> i hope we can avoid a civil war.
04:54 < Crichton__> (the beauty of the game is that money makes it real)
04:56 < luigi1112> :-)
04:56 < luigi1112> So real

Civil war would make the game interesting. Did you think of playing with the rules or outside of them?

05:07 < Crichton__> Can we schedule a town meeting with this as an agenda? There's a lot of voices missing

I will seek to be available tomorrow in IRC, from about 1pmUTC onwards.

05:22 < luigi1112> But I think if we don't get rid of CON we're deluding ourselves about long term success.

I am not that negative really. If we scrap CON we testify that we are incapable of achieving a >XMR growth rate, which disqualifies us from the term "success". There are other options.

05:31 < ArticMine> Hard to say without knowing the real reason it was paused in the first place?
05:32 < luigi1112> For development ostensibly..maybe hm wanted a vacation, but I am not sure

Real reasons have been told. Of course the understanding of matters evolves over time but I have no reason to speak bullshit and consequently don't do it.

05:34 < ArticMine> Which is fine if at the end of the pause the game is started again as was announced.
05:36 < ArticMine> But this has not occurred. Instead the community is now asked to decide the future of the game.

When the game was paused, XMR was still in the "perpetual promise" mode. Now it has proven itself. This has caused our goal to become harder to reach. The CON issue mentioned, requires us to fork 4x the money every year. For CK to be important for the XMR ecosystem requires more professionalism. This pause accidentally became the junction where it is reasonable to re-assess the whole game.

10:15 < binaryFate> What's the original ETA for unpausing the game? If this is postponed by fear of the crash, the very fact of postponing
                    will make it worse.
10:17 < binaryFate> What is the status of the game XMR wallet? How much there?
10:19 < binaryFate> As I see it, CON is a promise of the town to pay. If finances of the town go bust (lack of tax due to XMR rise and
                    in-game deflation), then town go brankrupt, sell its assets to pay creditors if necessary, and when there is nothing
                    left to sell, creditors take the hit.
10:20 < binaryFate> (I see this as a large holder of CON)
10:21 < binaryFate> CKG is really a share of the game itself, and if there is one thing that entitles to extracting wealth it's this.

There is no "fear of crash", it is evident that things will be repriced so that XMR revaluation is taken into account.

Saddam treasury holds 90 bil of which 13.74 bil is Town or "game" money.

Town must pay 100,000 for every CON by the end of every game year. If this does not happen, Town is legally bankrupt.

Town does not have any responsibility to uphold the value of any asset, including CON, CKG, or whatever else.

Well said! Perhaps it's worth repeating that nobody (including me) has yet been supporting the idea of closing it down. But it seems to have been a good discussion starter, to get the relevant things on the table.

In my opinion, finding the right team of people to take it forward is the crucial part here. Raising and arranging the funding and ownership is secondary. The ingame asset values should fall in their places quite automatically, and are not a concern.

I already mentioned in Speculation thread that the majority of my XMR were stolen, and that affects my personal priorities, in addition to being a massive psychological hit. The finding of new people to take central and peripheral positions alike, is not a bonus, it is a requirement for us to go on.

Yesterday there has been good discussion in the IRC, I heard. Can someone please post it to my PM here

My opinion is that if the game was initially intended to bring people to Monero and make Monero successful, then it has not yet accomplished that. I've seen speak of 100k's of people being brought into Monero, yet that hasn't likely happened from my perspective. Even when PLX is busy the people online is around 8-9k (6748 right now). PLX being the main exchange for Monero currently is the reason I'm using this as an example.

In that light, the game hasn't failed, or yet succeeded. Early closure at the first hint of going down the right path seems like a strange way to go IMO. Plus Monero isn't really worth that much right now. More than before, yes undeniably. At target, hardly there yet. So personally, I don't think that the argument that "the game has succeeded in its mission of bringing people to XMR and it cannot any more be so very crucial" is true as of yet.

That said, I think we should start by identifying the in-game assets that will likely take the biggest hit (or most affected) with the rise in Monero. CON is a good identification, but there are many companies that were worth a significant amount (shares), CKG, CKS, coins, property, buildings, building materials, IC, SCI, all of which are in a very different situation than they were before the pause. Then there are the things that those assets are directly tied to like the state of the game itself (software, community in CKG). Taking all of these variables into account and discussing them in an itemized way might help to clarify a way forward here.

The small cap items like npc's, consumables, one-off luxuries, art, ming, suits, furniture represent the least of interest, IMO. In short, if there ever was a time in which CK could be most crucial to XMR adoption, it starts now.

Excellent that we get the discussion needed!

Later today I am offline with logistics hurdles, but from tomorrow hopefully available.


As I wrote previously, I believe we should first convene this meeting, and after kickstarting the discussions, use it to vote for the Town Council. That keeps the planning process contained so that those who have a stake, have a voice as well. Town Council consists of 6 ppl, currently Sirjacket is the mayor.

As much as I like direct democracy, our governance model is not direct but representative, so that the different "parties" (eg. groups who want one of the 3 options to happen) will use their gold to get a councillor elected.


(nobody has "considered" shutting it down, I listed it for completeness' sake)

Town finances show the following:

Current accounts and accounts earmarked for development = 5.75 bil ($46k)
Accounts earmarked for game economy (rent pools) = 8.99 bil ($82k)
Liabilities from unpaid development, etc  = -1.00 bil ($8k)
Repayable debt = -0.00 bil ($0k)
----------------------------------------------------
Total 13.74 bil ($110k)

* Consol debt, game-annual interest payment (no principal repayment) = 0.45 bil ($4k)


From here on, it is useful to read the game rules and TOS, in order to understand why certain things are so.


It is very likely that over the period when the game has been paused, but the currency of the game has appreciated 300% or more, the equity and property values denominated in the said currency have plummeted. Market will be able to find the new values as it always has.


First when the competent governance is re-established, it will decide which of the options to take concerning how to continue the game. If:

1) the game is discontinued, every game asset loses its value, but assets that are tied to out-of-game value (Moneretos are claims to Saddam's treasury and there may be others), will redeem the out-of-game value first. In this scenario both CKG and CON become worthless with no repayment from anyone. (Since the game is public domain, it technically cannot be closed by majority decision, but in this event it makes sense to handle the majority decision first and continue afterwards.)

2) the game is continued, there will be no issue related to CKG, nobody is forced to pay dividends to it. As for CON, the Town is bound to pay 100,000 m annually, and this is potentially a large sum. If the Council refuses to pay, we have a world with illegal governance and need to select a new one. A "compromise" is also possible but I don't personally believe destroying the Town's credibility over this is a good idea if the wish is to continue.

3) since CON is an ingame asset, all disputes are handled in the game. Thoughts to escalate ingame matters to random out-of-game authorities are against the rules.


There are no financial problems currently as evident from the above. It is the plan how to continue, that we are discussing. Continuing does cost money, and especially it requires us to tighten our ranks with admin, dev, design, etc. I largely lost contact with the players in the spring when trying to let Rakshasa grow in the admin/GM/community manager position. When I saw it did not work out, it was already summer and much of the damage was done.

I planned the pause, and the "point of actual decision", beforehand. What I did not plan is the rise in XMR rate, which causes the following:
- Everyone is in a different level of wealth, affecting her available time and money
- It can be argued that the game has succeeded in its mission of bringing people to XMR and it cannot any more be so very crucial
- Game pools have more value in them in fiat terms, also CON annual payments have become larger in fiat terms.

CK is a game/ownership ledger in public domain. There are no known forks. The version that we have been playing has rulebound governance that enables the CKG holders to select and remove members of Town Council, who can decide the rules. Some other positions exist such as Gamemaster, who is the final authority in the state of the game (the ledger), because there is no blockchain, just a DB. Council appoints the GM, who is me.

The Town may only be indebted or liable in its own domain, ie. ingame. It is against the rules and also impossible for it to contract liabilities in outside world. It also does not have much liabilities, the assets are 10x or more larger.


The Town is net long XMR and net short a perpetual stream of XMR. There is nothing alarming in this, if we get enough people to play the game so that it offsets the increased fiat value of the CON payments. To get those people, we need to activate our community. They can bridge the gap that exists before Clans.

My intention is to drive home the point that the pioneering days are behind, and I am no more sufficient (nor able) to do everything. We need both old and new people, and we need money, and we need discussion, and we need plan, and then we need also luck.

After a lengthy discussion on ##crypto-kingdom, many of the players would like to have a more formal discussion about the game's future (mainly finances, but other game dynamics were discussed), and Sir Jacket was requested as moderator. If HM and Sir Jacket could comment on if they can attend the meeting, their roles, and also to the preferred schedule of the meeting, I think we could come to some consensus as to the game's near term goals. I pray everyone who has interest in the game to express their voice and lend some time for discussion.  

Humbly,

Crichton

I think what we are forgetting is that CON is actually paid for by the taxes on the land/buildings. It was designed to pay for itself..

I am not saying that only CON / S-CON has value. What I am saying is that it is a huge and growing liability to the game.

Edit 1: Of course without players CK is nothing.  CON / S-CON actually puts it into negative territory or deep into the red.

Edit 2: What a player is willing to pay in order to play the game is not denominated in XMR. It should increase over time only with purchasing power, say 1-2% per year in terms of EUR. Therein lies the issue and the XMR short.

CON is the only thing that needs to be made whole?

CON is but one asset in the game that is a risk. CKG and land are also major components of the game-it is unfair to assume only CON has value. It is the least player-centric component of this game, and without players CK is nothing. 

The fact that closing CK is even being considered leads me to believe that there are serious financial problems here that are not unrelated to the sharp rise in Moreno with respect not only to Bitcoin but also with respect to virtually every fiat currency.

I see the following issues:

1) There were many persons who invested  hundreds and thousands of Moreno in CK equity game assets. If the game is restarted and the market is allowed to set the value of these assets, this may address the issue; nevertheless there may still be the issue of loss in value caused by the pause over the summer. If on the other hand the game is not restarted or is "reset" there could be substantial claims here.
 
2) Then there is the issue of CON and the related asset S-CON. Time can be very much of the essence here, because this is a liability of CK that is denominated in Moreno and Moreno is sharply rising. I do not even want to fathom what the potential legal ramifications here may be. The best solution here I can see is to reach a settlement with the CON and S-CON holders. Given the current market situation with Moreno this may not be cheap. CON is basically a short position on Monero. Those on the long side of the contract are going to want to be paid. Given that in many jurisdictions crypto currency is effectively treated as money, this would be no different from a default denominated in fiat or Bitcoin. There are already significant legal precedents with defaults denominated in Bitcoin.

3) The pause has likely made the situation worse. If there are serious financial problems the sooner this is dealt with the better.  

4) I am not 100% clear on the legal status of CK. Who is actually the owner? Who is liable for the debts and other liabilities?

There is a distinct sense of deja-vu  here with Bitcoin in 2011 - 2013. Those who were short Bitcoin were fine until the price of Bitcoin started to move up, after the 2011 bear market. Once the short squeeze started the financial and legal consequences followed. Bitcoin itself of course was fine and the same is likely to be the case with Monero.

The best solution here is for the game to be salvaged and restarted if this is possible; nevertheless I believe that some sort of settlement, with the CON / S-CON holders is going to be needed. Contrary to some of the other comments I believe that Town and consequently CK is net short Monero which places CK in a very precarious financial situation.

Edit: I am unclear why the game could not continue in the Ultima form while the Clans version is developed.

After quite a hectic summer, I am able to rejoin CK and hopefully help take this game to the next level


I believe that further pausing of the game may prove detrimental to its success. Given the short timelines in crypto, it has seemed like years since we have been able to play. While the idea of continuing to play the current version is a bit of a step backwards from where we had hoped the game would be, perhaps now is the time to capitalize on the large amount of interest in XMR due to the moon and Other Things.  This may cause a lot of players to join the game and help jump-start the it again. I agree with NewLiberty on this matter. Once clans is appropriately planned, built, and tested, at that point we can move it into the spotlight in a seamless fashion while still allowing things to percolate.


We are at a fortunate place with CK now that the town funds have ballooned in fiat values. This could allow us to hire people to seriously take on the game admin, community outreach, as well as some marketing.  I think if we were to hire one or more of these positions, the potential gains for the game (and monero) could outweigh the costs.

I completely agree with going2mars and ChrisPop

We must advance, not 'reset'  

If I can help with anything, feel free to contact me, however.. I am very thin on time

I agree with goin2mars. I have deposited over 200 XMR into the game and I have bought items with that,but now in the balance I only have a few mils so I strongly think that CK SHOULD NOT BE CLOSED in this form. Regarding the other 2 plans: To return to the Ultima? Well,then why we made this long pause? I think we should progress not stay in the place. If we decide to wait for the "Clans" version how much will be until it gets live?

I'd be sad to see the thousands of monero ive deposited be returned as only the 110 that i currently have.

Well third option is to decide that the game has lived for 2 years and during this time, contributed what it could towards keeping XMR alive, and we will never know whether it was important or not. Now it seems XMR will stay alive regardless of the game, so we can fold it and everybody gets their monereto balances back.

These 3 are the main options, and we have functional rules to govern the decision-making:

* I am now trying to get people to discuss in a larger group, same way as the IRC room was in the very beginning.
* This larger group will elect a new Council, to ensure that every councillor is still active and backed by gold.
* The Council will make the decisions, after having plans for all the options, so that the decision is backed by action plans.
* Then the plan selected, will be put into action.

The Wizard is already drafting the plan for #1 (To restart the game at the "Ultima" version).

From what I understand we have two decide between two options right?

1) To restart the game at the "Ultima" version.
2) To keep the game paused until the development of "Clans" version is finished.

King please correct me if this is not right.

If what I do is wrong, please do better yourself! Or at least tell me what to do

I have been trying to get it restarted for 2 weeks now.

Hmm.. its not very good in the view of XMR price.. =(

Treasury is operated by saddam. As far as I know, withdrawals are disabled because enabling them would require the corresponding game ledger (changelog) be operational so that it gets recorded both sides. But changelog is paused because the game is paused.

I am very urgently trying to get the players to decide what to do next. This includes the possibility to unpause the game, but the unpausing is not a trivial action and requires many decisions and lots of work.