I'd like to get back to posting a bit more often about what's going on "behind the scenes" and give people some better insight on the development of things while also discussing future potential possibilities and maybe more involvement by the community and other projects here if they're interested!
If there's one thing I've learned the past year is that I personally like to think things don't take as long as they do, even with a small team there's always things that come in the way or occur that are unpredictable and some times take way longer than hey should. I'm not talking about the development of the project as a whole as that's had quite a few more factors this year as we all probably are aware of with how Hive has performed for most of it, but for every task there's almost always something that may take longer than expected.
For instance we've started work on the 3d generation of our assets recently with a new team and to get things "right" it's taken quite a few revisions and improvements back and forth from us (our art team) and their team. It's understandable in hindsight but I'm often oblivious to these things, for instance the first iteration of a "new" aspect of it is taking longer than expected, the healer. This is due to it being a lot more complex than the creatures, or most of them anyway, it having a lot of different animations and us wanting to keep things such as polycount low so that everyone can enjoy the game without lag/performance issues on things like older mobile devices. At the same time, however we do want them to look good since we've been keeping the looks of the game hidden from public for some time now we want first impressions to be proper even while all this time trying to do things as cost effectively as possible - it's a difficult balance!
Once the first healer is finished and we're happy with the results however, the next ones shouldn't be as difficult as they only require minor adjustments in terms of shape for the same genders at least. Hopefully the team won't get too annoyed with us wanting things slightly changed over and over in the meantime. :D
Anyway, while that's underway we're still working on things here and there while understanding that people involved with the project have "real life jobs" or a lot of other projects ongoing at the same time and can't always dedicate their time and focus 100% on us. After all we're not really at a point in time where we can offer them a secure "wage" so to speak since these markets are so volatile and for most of 2024 the only way to fund the project has been through delegations which themselves are volatile too as people can increase the delegations or decrease them at their own volition.
It's a really cool way to crowdfund things, however, I wish Hive would've held up a bit better during this year or that more people would've decided to support our project during the "tight" funding times. To give you an example, at one point we were only earning about $500/week in curation rewards which for a project our size is not really close to anything. 😅 We made it through those times however and looking a lot brighter into the future now, all while keeping the project fully crowdfunded, not printing and issuing out tokens to private investors, even though there's been a few such requests during this time. We've just had to tell them that if you want to get involved you have to delegate or buy zing like everyone else, the team and founder included. (Which I have to be honest is a cool thing to say that you won't hear in many other places!)
That said there's been some slight PTSD from the recent year. Not that I personally doubted Hive would survive it or anything, but when it came to the project and how rough it had it for a while the way I react towards its funding has definitely changed. For instance recently when someone bought a lot of vials, the smallest dip in Hive made me want to pay off any outstanding debt we had and trade the hive into HBD. This obviously meant that the project "lost" some appreciation from 2.85 to 3.15 but I just thought in case it were to continue to drop for a while it'd be bad news for funding and since majority of our funding is still locked away in HP it'd be better to diversify this way.
Thus we are being a lot more careful now to make similar mistakes as we did when we started out, Hive was hovering around $1, delegations were close to ATH due to "ooh new shiny thing" and we thought everything would get done swiftly and properly with no hiccups. Other projects on Hive like splinterlands also running into funding issues for instance has made us very vary to take things slow, not rush into any promises or look to already grow the team thinking it's "only up" from here, etc.
We're okay with taking things slow and making sure that the project moves forward even if slower as long as it doesn't mean crashing and having to halt progression in some of its fields in order to focus on only funding the crucial parts of it due to lack of funding. After all we have a huge advantage in terms of the uniqueness of the game and idea behind it, the way it can scale onto multiple mediums, platforms and gaming categories and most importantly the way it was crowdfunded making it very difficult for others to ever compete against that method. It's a bit similar to how Hive is, can you imagine Elon giving away power or his X shares to users based on how active they are? Or someone deciding to create something similar as Hive but having to buy into or earn it just like everyone else without giving themselves or rich "friends" cheap early entry before everyone else gets the same chance?
Anyway, this post is side-tracking a little like usual.
Talking diversification, however, it'll be important to also diversify the way the crowd can invest and participate in holozing. We have some plans on opening up crowdfunding in different ways and make it as easy as possible for more people to get involved, even those that may not have a hive account or wouldn't wanna go through the hassle of linking one - however we'd want them to do so at some point in the future and leave that option open for when they want more benefits, less fees and of course access to the whole social side of things and community.
It's too early to discuss details here today, but let's just say one of them is in a different chain while the other isn't on any chain!
Anyway, lots of cool stuff being worked on and planned out, I'm quite excited for it but also wanting to take a little step off from the daily tasks and involvement I've been in for the past year and a half - not to mention the planning that occurred before that. So I'm kind of on the look-out for someone who's just as excited about the project as I am, potentially has a lot of experience in gaming and games like these + blockchain and crypto and would either already be well versed in holozing or willing to learn everything there is in order to help me out with day to day co-ordination between gamedev and hive devs, 3d, social activities on hive, contests, etc. If this sounds like something you'd be up for and good at, feel free to reach out and we can discuss things further!