Ikigai - UE4/Unity Plugins & Tools

Problem Statement (continued)

With blockchain and NFTs surging, the interest for new ways to use blockchain in games continues to grow. The video game market is bigger than music and film combined [1] yet NFTs are still in their infancy. In 2020, there were over 2 billion users in just Unity [2] and 7 million developers. In addition to the wide indie scene Unity appeals to, Unreal Engine also attracts a similar number of developers at 7.5 million according to CEO Tim Sweeny [3]. Despite such a thriving ecosystem of developers and record breaking revenue from the video game industry, blockchain integration is few and far between.

While there have been solid efforts to integrate blockchain into UE4 [4] [5] and Unity [6], there still remain some pain points for developers that remain to be solved. While there will inevitably be efforts to add Cardano to these ecosystems, we believe it is not a small undertaking and requires professional experience to go from creating a passable tool/plugin to creating a robust, industry-ready plugin. Professional game industry experience for what developers actually want, professional experience creating these tools, and finally extensive knowledge of the blockchain/cardano ecosystem is needed. Finally, even after hooking into these systems, we believe being able to cross communicate between in-game worlds and other platforms is a must for mass adoption.

Summary of current problems:

Solid attempts have been made, but no professional attempts with experience of game industry knowledge, professional game development experience, or cardano expertise have been made
Creating a plugin is "easy"; creating an industry ready tool is hard
After the plugin is written, it is not connected to a rich ecosystem yet
Getting professional developers from the game industry is hard
Lacking adoption once tools are released

Describe Your Solution To The Problem (continued)

We have assembled a diverse team with a veteran advisory board with years of experience at gaming company titans such as Epic Games and Riot Games (see full list below). Paired with our team of executives from the tech industry, marketing professionals, and game development experts; we are poised to dive in and create tools/plugins for everyone in the game industry and for Cardano to find mass adoption.

To accomplish this, we have a veteran team of senior developers from the company that makes Unreal Engine as well as experience building plugins for these platforms. Their resumes speak for themselves and are highly qualified to create industry-ready plugins and are aware of the tough road ahead of making sure the tools are robust enough and easy to use for developers of all skill levels to pick up and use.

In addition to creating the plugins, they will also be plugged into the rich ecosystem of <https://logosphere.io> with data that can be linkable across other platforms and games or even ecosystems outside of the game itself!

We also understand there is more work to be done even after creating robust tools. Other developers and companies need to know about it! Using Chris's experience with marketing (see experience below), we will push out status updates along the way as well as market to game developers when the tools are ready - or ready to be tested in Beta. Landing with a big splash helps grow adoption. We also know the frustrations from using a tool that is no longer supported, so we plan on keeping the team on staff as long as there are updates to be made before transitioning support over to Ikigai Technologies.

Deliverables:

• Unreal Engine (UE4)

• Plugin

• Integration to UE Marketplace

• Wallet integration

• Fluree / Logosphere integration

• Player-to-Player marketplace tooling

• Player-to-Marketplace integration

• Unity

• Plugin

• Wallet integration

• Fluree / Logosphere integration

• Player-to-Player marketplace tooling

• Player-to-Marketplace integration

Relevant Experience (continued)

Ikigai Team:

Michael Yagi: CEO of Ikigai Technologies. Shipped 3 titles at 2K Interactive in the mobile division. Successful mobile card game monetization that broke into the top grossing list several times throughout the years. Wrote UE4 plugin to handle synchronization of realtime music events to game events.
Chris Chung: COO at Ikigai Technologies, Executive at Coding Dojo, President of C2 Marketing Solutions and Advisor to multiple start-up companies; Chris comes with an array of knowledge ranging from marketing (his original area of expertise) to business operations. Chris has been featured in 425 Business Magazine and Millennial Magazine for his business accolades and accomplishments.
Dmitri Safine: CTO at Ikigai Technologies: Dmitri will help integration of plugins with logosphere ecosystem. Previously, he was a senior solutions architect at Amazon with experience in cloud architecture, data engineering, R&D and prototyping in big data and analytics space at. He has built numerous data lakes, ETL pipelines, multidimensional cubes and data analysis applications and is passionate about identifying emerging technologies and composing them into cohesive scalable solutions that solve problems.
Anon Dev: Experience 5+ years in the games industry and working on unity tooling, indie game experience, and working at a AAA studio.

Other Developers:

Stan: From working on award winning student games to AAA titles such as Robo Recall and Fortnite at Epic Games, Stan has been involved in games his whole career.
Steven: Physics programmer at Epic Games.
Anon Dev - Senior Engineer at a AAA studio

Ikigai Partners:

DigiPen Institute of Technology: The leading school for game development and design! Guest lectures and access to the creative minds of faculty members; many of whom are from or still in the game industry. Currently working on setting up an internship program to help on this proposal's effort!
Fluree Team: Ability to utilize recent partnership with Fluree[7] for advisory help from a team of 17 professionals that will be assisting with development of in various capacities.

Game Industry Advisors:

Anh Doh: Started as a developer turned Producer at Giant Enemy Crab, she now helps run the studio.
Stan: From working on award winning student games to AAA titles such as Robo Recall and Fortnite at Epic Games, Stan has been involved in games his whole career.
Steven: Physics programmer at Epic Games.
Aaron: Designer, developer, artist - Aaron does it all with some of his most popular titles being Robo Recall and Fortnite at Epic Games.
Jordan: Jordan went to school for game development and is now a Senior Developer at Riot Games working on popular titles such as League of Legends.
Alan: Project Manager at Xbox Game Studios
Alexander: Developer at Treyarch
Joe: Developer at Probably Monsters previously at Respawn Entertainment

Defining Success

Having all worked extensively in the game industry, we know this is a much bigger task that may seem at first glance, and we want to do it right! Documentation, design phases, planning, and agile development practices will be established before any code is written. We are all senior engineers and know the importance of setting things up correctly from the start.

1 month in

Design Documentation and Spikes started for both engines (UE4/Unity) and Cardano integration
Long term planning, strategy, and support
Work Items created, costed, and planned and Agile Methodologies set up
Sample sandbox plugins compiled in UE4 directly from Epic Games set up and running
Sample sandbox plugins compiled in Unity set up and running
Ready for testing and outreach starting
Reviewing design and proposal with advisory board

3 months in

UE4 plugin Beta working and ready for testing/early release
Unity plugin Beta working and ready for testing/early release
Wallet integration
API for connecting to Logosphere work started
Player-To-Player tooling started
Reaching out to community for testing
Some press releases for awareness to gain interest
Grow adoption and make splash with production release
Reviewing progress and collecting feedback for features with advisory board

6 months in

UE4 plugin ready for production
Unity plugin ready for production
Logosphere integration
Player-To-Player tooling finished
Player-To-Market integration started
Grow developer adoption with marketing materials
Reviewing progress and collecting feedback for features with advisory board

No one likes to use plugins that are no longer supported. Any bug fixes or enhancements will be planned for and done here. Finishing all remaining tasks. Press releases and marketing to bring on more developers into the ecosystem will continue here.

8 months in

UE4 plugin support and bug fixes
Unity plugin support and bug fixes
Player-To-Market integration started
Any logosphere integration support or improvements
Marketing and outreach
Collecting feedback for features with advisory board & postmortem

Expected Launch Date: Q2 2022

Budget

Developer Costs ($51,500):

Senior Engineer (working at VERY discounted rate from normally 250k+ salary) = $14,500

Software Developer Intern through DigiPen Institute of Technology (rest of compensation will be subsidized by Ikigai Technologies) = $8,000

Marketing ($3,000):

Marketing, sales, and outreach = $2,500

Miscellaneous ($1,500):

Advisory Board "Thank you" Reward = $1,5000

Floating 15% for unexpected costs ($4,000):

Developer tools, licenses, other unknowns = 4,000

Total ($60,000)

Links

Video games are bigger business than ever, topping movies and music combined: <https://www.usatoday.com/videos/tech/2021/06/10/e-3-2021-video-games-big-business-topping-film-and-music-combined/7637695002/>
<https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/24/21399611/unity-ipo-game-engine-unreal-competitor-epic-app-store-revenue-profit>
<https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2020-01-16-what-is-the-best-game-engine-is-unreal-engine-4-the-right-game-engine-for-you>
<https://usethebitcoin.com/nano-unreal-engine-plugin-allows-users-to-earn-crypto-while-playing-games/>
<https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/etherlinker>
https://medium.com/arkane-network/the-complete-toolset-for-blockchain-integration-in-games-with-arkanes-unity-plugin-c8e397bbf9a1
<https://flur.ee/partners>
<https://logosphere.io>

bookmarked!

bookmarked!