Why Ogami Conquest is Not Participating in the Axie Builders Program Anymore
A couple of weeks ago, we have decided that we will not join the Axie Builders Program with our game Ogami Conquest. We decided to develop Ogami Conquest on top of our own IP rather than that of Axie. Here is why:
TLDR;
According to the guidelines of the ABP, raising funds through selling NFTs or having external funding through Angel Investors, etc. before soft-launching the game is not allowed
There is a possibility that a AAA studio is invited by Sky Mavis to develop a MOBA game as well, making it hard for us to compete without funding.
ABP is designed for community-made minigames. Ogami Conquest is not a minigame, therefore not suited to be developed within the terms of the ABP since we cannot soft-launch without raising funds.
Our plans for Ogami Conquest are bigger than what we could accomplish within the limitations of the ABP (e.g., new approach toward NFT supply balancing through recycling, our own tokenomics, burning mechanisms, a new governance model and an open-garden approach toward monetization rights of our NFTs and IP).
We started working on Ogami Conquest in October 2021, months before the Axie Builders Program was announced. The first whitepaper was released on December 12th 2021 with the goal to raise attention for a MOBA game that is based on top of the Axie IP, developed by us, Frei Studios.
At that point in time, the main topic within the Axie community was to find solutions for a burning mechanism for $SLP. Ogami Conquest was supposed to be one of these solutions by laying out several methods to burn SLP within Ogami Conquest.
A couple of weeks after publishing our whitepaper, the Axie Builders Program was officially announced, and we were more than thrilled to participate in it! We were happy since this was a big win for the whole community. Community-made games. That’s the exact future we wanted for Axie. The guidelines for the Axie Builders program were developer-friendly. There were no real boundaries except one thing: At least 10% of all revenue must be burned in $SLP or go into the community treasury ($AXS). This was it, exactly what we imagined it would look like. We applied on the day it was announced. Since fundraising wasn’t mentioned directly in the article, upon asking in the Discord, it was said that Sky Mavis would re-structure the guidelines and update us builders about raising funds for ABP games in the updated version of their guidelines.
We already came up with a funding model for Ogami Conquest when we released our whitepaper back in December 2021. We would sell NFTs, which would be in form of ‘Badges’ with three different tiers. Backers would get limited skins and some other perks upon funding Ogami Conquest through the purchase of said badges. We called the badges ‘Founder’s Gem’. We always stated that we were not going to sell any NFTs before we don’t have to greenlight by Sky Mavis, be it in a form of participating in the Builders Program or through a direct license. A month or two went by and the updated version of the Axie Builders Program came out with bad news for us.
Before continuing, the Axie Builders Program, originally, was created to support community-made minigames. But Ogami Conquest was not supposed to be a minigame. The Axie Builders Program incentivizes developers to develop games on their own and through the help and participation of other Axie community members. We, at that point in time, already had a team working on Ogami Conquest that was being paid by us but did not consist of Axie community members or wasn’t willing to work for free. So, keeping this in mind will help you understand our decision!
Unfortunately, the updated version of the ABP included several things which could not work for us. The first thing was, that we were not allowed to sell NFTs, in the context of the Axie IP, to raise funds for Ogami Conquest before soft-launching and being vetted and/or greenlit by Sky Mavis. The scale of Ogami Conquest is too big to soft launch without any funding. Therefore, this was a big issue for us. An alternative solution would be to invite Angel Investors to fund Ogami Conquest (without selling NFTs). But this was not allowed either before soft launching.
Since we started working on Ogami Conquest, we knew that there could be competition. But we weren’t concerned about having competition if we would be able to raise the funds how we expected it to be. Sky Mavis stated that they may invite AAA studios to develop a game that is already in development by an ABP team or already soft-launched successfully within the terms of the ABP. Normally, this would not be a problem for us, but the fact that we could not fund Ogami Conquest and needed to work for free up until soft-launching made it a high risk of not being able to compete with a AAA studio that has enough funding and time. We could potentially waste a lot of our work since the development of Ogami Conquest and without the expected funds, it would also result in major delays. Until we could deliver at least an MVP, it could have been too late for us. So, we were left with no choice but to pivot from our original idea of developing Ogami Conquest on top of the Axie IP.
We are not leaving the Axie community! We are planning to release a hyper-casual mobile game that suits the terms of the Axie Builders Program, where we don’t need major funds until soft-launching it. We are planning to attend the Axiecon in Barcelona this year and are excited to present you our ideas and even a prototype gameplay footage for the event! Also, we are aware that many of you were really excited for an Axie MOBA. Our friends at “Axie Brawl” are also working on an Axie MOBA game. Make sure to follow them on their Twitter.
The Future of Ogami Conquest
But this does not mean that we are not developing Ogami Conquest - we are! We will replace Axies with Kodari NFTs which utilize 4 body parts/traits as well as breeding with a recycling mechanism, whereupon recycling a Kodari, the holder gets back 50% of the $OGM token that was used to breed a Kodari. We put a lot of thought process and work into finding solutions to challenges of blockchain gaming, new approaches like recycling and hyperinflation, and came up with a completely new governance structure for blockchain games, which we call “Decentralized Parliamentary Organisation” or DPO in short. We invite everyone to read our litepaper on our website: ogamiconquest.io.
Read our Litepaper!
We want to conclude this article with a summary of what Ogami Conquest and the Ogami ecosystem is today:
Ogami Conquest is the first Play-And-Earn MOBA game with sandbox elements that utilize NFTs as playable and breedable characters backed by the $OGM token, giving players true ownership of their NFTs and a new governance model that bridges the gap between players and developers.
That’s it for today’s article. See you on the next one!
On behalf of the team,
Yevme — Yunus Emre Ünal