Please describe your proposed solution.
"Aedou - the Realm of Languages" aims to be the first digital game that supports diverse & innovative learning & teaching experiences in safe, active and engaging 3D-environments that are built and governed by the community through DAOs and leveraging PRISM-DIDs/VCs on the Cardano blockchain.
Aedou is a free collaborative multiplayer game (MMORPG/Sandbox) to learn languages like you would do while traveling a foreign country in a supported, structured and guided way (customizable to your preferences). Learning occurs through immersing yourself in your language of choice - hearing, reading and speaking in a contextualized environment with other people. The biggest difference is that all content is adapted to your personal language proficiency. This means that you always have manageable content to interact with and use in your surroundings, preventing you from being overwhelmed. This differs vastly from most formal education approaches that abstract away most of the context and leave you alone in a fixed system to sink or swim.
Each language has their own world, experiences & levels, where active use of language is the magic that you need to interact with the environment. Through learning and exploring, you progress in the game and narrative, and vice versa. As the active usage of a language is the main mechanic to play the game, you need to get better to progress, resulting in intrinsic motivation and self-directed deep learning. The game is providing you with attainable bits of language to learn and progress in your target language while remaining immersed and without translating into your first language. Learning outcomes are coupled to game outcomes, so you need to progress to learn.
The international target audience mainly consists of…
- gamers
- everyone that has tried learning a language but stopped a few weeks in due to a lack of engagement and motivation
- people looking for practice partners and tandems
- pupils that do not feel safe going to school or have limited access to high quality learning material
- teachers searching for creative, active learning
All worlds and their contents are built, inhabited, governed and curated by independent DAOs consisting of first language (L1-)speakers, language professionals and high-level players (the latter need to succeed in an assessment first). This is made possible through distributed & modularized creation, enabling you to only contribute what you do best in a shared creation process. We are building the most intuitive Level Builder, which splits the creative process into individual parts and removes most of the complexity for creating a level.
We are also integrating Atala PRISM DIDs into our DAOs to independently prove your learning progress, language proficiency and in-game reputation/membership via VCs in- and outside the game. At this point, we are thinking of creating our own emergent trust registry to protect against sybill attacks, meaning that DAO members need to verify new members in a personal chat and thus vouch for their proficiency and for them being humans, not bots. Emergent trust is build up from a person-to-person network and does not rely on KYC-services and support of your government. We got funded in Fund 8 to build a first DID-prototype for Aedou (scheduled to start in August).
We will collaborate with RootsID as our identity wallet provider once things are ready for this step. RootsID is the most promising open-source identity wallet for Atala PRISM, funded through Catalyst. https://www.rootsid.com/
Aedou is designed with low barriers in mind and to provide a safe space for vulnerable groups. This includes private and anonymous participation, highly customizable button mapping and interfaces, integration of accessibility controllers/interfaces for disabled communities (e.g. playable as only-audio/only-visual).
Games & Learning - why we believe that games can be ideal learning environments
- Good games are designed to learn, practice and apply knowledge/skills in a meaningful context. Games are creative, multi-sensory and intrinsically motivating experiences that allow for moments of flow with just the right amount of challenge to stimulate curiosity and avoid overload. This is crucial for deep learning, prolonged interest and continuous improvement. Also, you are only participating on your own free will, which is the core defining criteria for games in general (& having a set of rules).
- In games, failing isn't bad, but an existential part of the path to mastery and almost necessary for finishing a game. Try anything as often as you want, get stronger and eventually overcome your challenges. Experimentation, a.k.a. freely trying out stuff on your own, is not included in most formal curricula. In Aedou, experimentation is encouraged as you learn through actually using your new knowledge in a failure-safe environment. Games are almost always designed to be achievable, meaning that everyone has a fair chance of success (not true for real world).
- MMORPGs (Massively-Multiplayer-Online-Role-Playing-Games) are dynamic and active narrative learning environments for social and collaborative (or competitive) experiences, where content and places are clearly structured and open to self-paced exploration, on your own or together. Players are encouraged to organize themselves in social groups. Sandbox games use the power of the community to create and manage vast amounts of content and interactions. Exploration of deep, rich and interactive content in an interconnected, personal narrative is a key design criteria for both of these genres, and thus they are ideal for situated learning of complex topics in an immersive world, e.g. languages.
Languages
The current choice of starter languages is heavily influenced by the spoken languages in the Catalyst community as a representation of the Cardano ecosystem & our available resources. We hope that this enhances the reach of Aedou and its relevance to Catalyst greatly. With this, we are profoundly lowering the barriers to start learning a new language, be it for communication, private or professional purposes. We hope that this results in an enhanced connection between Catalyst members and increased diversity & appreciation of languages in the Cardano ecosystem. Languages that were not included are open to join if there is sufficient interest (after we finish the MVP).
For the MVP, we are focusing on English, Japanese & Swahili as our smallest set of globally important languages with lots of available resources across Catalyst to give us a smaller and more manageable focus of work. We added German just because half of our team is German, and it's therefore closest to us and easiest to check for factors like correctness, complexity and fun, which we believe to require the intuitive perception of a first language speaker.
After building the MVP, we intend to add four more languages every two months to its supported content to make sure that the MVP works as intended for diverse languages & to adjust things early on. This is important for us to slowly grow the MVP capabilities in lockstep with the amount of supported languages and rising complexity.
The budget for the language ambassadors is already included in our approved fund 8 proposal.
- MVP (September 2022): English, German, Japanese & Swahili
- October 2022 (Fund 9 start): Arabic, Mandarin, Spanish, Amharic
- December 2022: Portuguese, Indonesian, French, Vietnamese
- February 2023: Italian, Ukrainian, Polish, Hindi
All blockchain components are optional - but offer lots of value
- We plan to have our own native token as an additional in-game currency that fuels the DAO-system. All revenue streams are automatically exchanged to ADA via Smart Contract and redirected to the game's treasury. You can burn your tokens to redeem your fair share of the treasury, splitting up the ownership & profit of Aedou to the community, not one centralized actor.
- As a requirement to earn tokens, you first need to become a member of a DAO with your DID and thus verify that you are a human being. This is necessary to protect us from bad actors that want to game the system. You earn tokens through meaningful contribution, e.g. creating quality content, curating/playtest proposed content, vote on DAO decisions, or simply by playing and learning a language. You can also play and learn without verification, but you will also play without the added blockchain-benefits in that case.
- Reputable members of the DAO get a small plot of virtual land for free to cultivate and build on top of, verified through a PRISM-credential for reputation. The land size increases depending on your rank and reputation inside the DAO. The DAOs grant its reputable members these land plots and can therefore revoke their ownership if members loose their reputation through trying to game the system or not respecting our Code of Conduct. These land plots can also be rented out by their owners to create additional revenue streams for them, but the main idea is to give everyone the opportunity to represent themselves and to link to their existing real-life services and goods. This provides a huge incentive to be a good actor, helps the DAO foster & flourish, and makes each world unique according to the cultures
- We offer education credentials as a proof of progressing through the game and thus learning basic communication in a new language. As PRISM-credentials are verifiable, other parties (e.g. school, university, employer, …) can trust that you have made the effort. Through joining a DAO, you get a credential to proof your first language as that is a requirement to join the corresponding DAO. If you join the DAO by playing through the game content of that language, you get an honourable credential and also become part of that worlds' DAO.
- All items can be minted into NFTs (e.g. mounts, pets, cosmetics, collectibles, …) which you can mint on our platform and trade on other marketplaces. This process is also reverseable. In that case, an in-game item is bound to your NFT-ownership (not applying if you have earned that item through playing). We will integrate with open source wallets like GameChanger, Nami or CCvault.
- We love the philosophy of SSI (Self-Sovereign-Identity) to own and control your own data. Likewise, you can choose to monetize your anonymized data through including them in a data set/package that stores learning/language data. Researchers and companies can then buy a data package to use in their researches, while you earn the generated revenue.
Market
Godot is the biggest open source game engine in the world with a market share of 5%. Minecraft, the most-sold game in the world with 238 million copies, is building an education series for formal education in classrooms (same is true for Roblox). Games like Minecraft, Roblox or Fortnite, that also offer user-generated content, an own in-game economy and currency, report several hundred million monthly active users each.
Please describe how your proposed solution will address the Challenge that you have submitted it in.
- Aedou is a 100% Catalyst-funded, meaningful and inclusive game on the Cardano blockchain that has massive potential to adopt millions of gamers, students, teachers and researchers from outside the blockchain space with a globally unique & novel use case. Through combining informal education with gaming, Aedou is enabling radically new ways of innovative blockchain gaming with more sustainable business models & practices.
- One unique opportunity is to become the first game that successfully combines "playing" with "education". This has been tried by many with gamification or so-called "serious games", although the results are mostly standard educational approaches in disguise, resulting in the infamous chocolate-covered broccoli problem - a feeling of being cheated and thus being neither entertained nor educated. This is due to a lack of expertise in games by project leads and a vast underestimation of the potential of games, belittling multiple genres with billions of users to only a "waste of time" and "useless by definition". Aedou is designed by life-long gamers & learners that know the worth of a true game & what it needs to be a good game. All while having the nice benefit that you actually learn a new language and play cooperatively, not competitively, to get additional, undebatable value from playing a game while possibly spending hours inside of it. There is NO fully functioning game yet that deals with learning languages. This is a huge chance to achieve mass adoption for Cardano and Atala PRISM (Minecraft & Roblox are trying to get into the formal education sector).
- Most gamers know that the NFT-craze and "play-to-earn"-metaverses are receiving lots of hate and pushback from the global gaming community, and rightfully so if they are solely used to raise exclusivity & competition. Cardano needs wholesome and meaningful games that include rather than exclude. This is why we do not press blockchain features onto people that just want to play and learn and do not want to get involved with blockchain in any way. All earning functionalities are optional and only activated once you become part of one of the DAOs of the game on your own accord. We do not want to give players exclusive ownership of their assets and make them rich through speculation and greed. Our focus is to connect people from around the world to share, learn and communicate with each other while earning off of the game's general revenue and helping each other grow. We want gamers to benefit as much as content creators while not raising any unnecessary barriers, but instead connect them more deeply with one another and give users a say in the direction of Aedou's future.
- Aedou has the potential to attract new users to Cardano that have no connection to (or even heavy biases against) blockchain technology. This is why all blockchain components are optional for playing, but easily within reach for every user to explore at their own leisure, and only if they decide for the massive benefits on their own.
- Every part of Aedou will be made open source, so it will benefit all game developers on Cardano and related projects (e.g. treasury smart contract & very accessible level editor). The final Aedou version will run on distributed hosting & computing services (e.g. Arweave & NuNet).
What are the main risks that could prevent you from delivering the project successfully and please explain how you will mitigate each risk?
- Godot engine development delays resulting in game development delays. Godot has launched their tenth alpha for the upgraded Godot 4 version. Our team is highly experienced in the Godot stack and can already work efficiently with the current alpha as we have already built our Playground v1 in it. As there are no features that we are waiting for, we should not be impacted by delays of the Godot Beta.
- Obviously, the development of the Cardano protocol & Atala PRISM capacities are crucial for enabling cheap and efficient smart contracts & handling of PRISM credentials & DIDs in connection to DAOs. The general lack of an identity wallet to store and manage DIDs could result in a blocker at some point, but we have great trust in the many capable people that are working feverishly on that solution. As all blockchain components are optional for the gameplay itself, we can focus on developing the gameplay part first, no matter the blockchain state, and keep most of the blockchain side for a later development stage where we hopefully have the sufficient capacities & best practices regarding treasuries/smart contracts in general.
- Another risk would be a lack of partnerships & collaborations on the language and blockchain part. The same is true for community engagement & adoption. We are hiring a social media manager to grow the Aedou community. The development of our Aedou website is currently in progress (scheduled to be launched before voting), where we want to manage community contributions and engage/inform new users. We believe that the website together with our developed MVP (September 22) will raise our chances of getting a partnership significantly.
- The risk of creating boring content is mitigated by extensive research into game-and-learning design & playtesting a lot with both inexperienced & seasoned gamers, as well as L1 & L2 speakers to achieve the most engaging outcomes for all.