Write Lore, Win Packs: Rise of the Pixels Lore Contests

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(Edited)
Authored by @jfuji

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In Hive’s newest game, Players from Earth work with the mysterious new beings of the Pixelverse to create video games and earn $PXL tokens.

The story of the Pixelverse is shrouded in mystery, and we’re looking for help from the Hive and Rise of the Pixels communities to help uncover the secrets.

In partnership with the Scholar & Scribe writing community as well as our friends at Dreemport, we’re launching a series of fun writing contests centered around the emerging lore of the game.

🎁 Prizes include RotP Game Licenses, 8-bit packs, HSBI, Ecency points, Layer 2 tokens, and more.

❗️But more importantly, elements of what community members write will become enshrined in the game itself, appearing in lore documents or even on NFTs❗️

 
If you like to dabble in lore and write a little fiction, have a look at the contests we have lined up, and join one or all of ‘em!

ContestStatusDates
1️⃣ The Scene at the Rift✅ CompleteJan 5 to 17
2️⃣ Organization Origin Story✅ CompleteJan 14 to 23
3️⃣ Fusion Exploration✅ CompleteJan 20 to 31

Note: by participating, you agree that the Rise of the Pixels team may adapt or directly use your creative concepts in their game. You will be credited wherever possible, but the only compensations are the prizes set out in each contest's post.

The Contests

Note: All contest entrants are asked to review the short Lore Teaser post to get a sense of the basics of the RotP lore.

1️⃣ The Scene at the Rift

Run by @grocko, Scholar & Scribe’s regular Invitational contest will be RotP themed in January, and will ask writers to tell the tale of when the Rift opened between Earth and the Pixelverse.

💥 Action writers, this is your calling! Contest opens January 5 and the submission deadline is January 17.

👉 The official contest post and rules are here: LINK

2️⃣ Organization Origin Story

@samsmith1971 leads the Dreemport ‘Word of the Week’ contest, which involves a rotation writing challenge that is typically posted on Hive then submitted to the DreemPort curation platform. Writers are evaluated using an awesome and in depth rubric, and the prizes are numerous.

The next WOTW will have a Rise of the Pixels theme, wherein writers will be asked to detail the background or origin story of the enigmatic “Organization” that first discovered the Pixelverse.

🏗 Backstory builders, this one is for you! Contest opens January 13/14 and the submission deadline is January 23.

👉 The official contest post and rules are here: LINK

3️⃣ Mythic Bios OR Fusion Exploration

After we see how the above contests play out, we’ll run a third one which will involve entrants either writing some original bios for Mythic rarity NFT workers, or we will look for backstory on why and how Pixelians undergo their strange Fusion process.

If you have an opinion on which you’d like to see, leave a comment! This post will be updated with a link to the contest once it’s live.

👉 UPDATE: We're going with Fusion backstories, and the link is here!

Announcements on Discord

Apart from this post, we will drop notices about the contests, their deadlines, etc. in the Rise of the Pixels Discord server. If folks wish, we can even do some writing brainstorming there!

Learn more about the project with the links below, and good luck to everyone who participates.

The Rise Of The Pixels Links

Check out the official website: https://riseofthepixels.com
Read more in the game Rulebook: https://rulebook.riseofthepixels.com
Follow us on Hive: https://peakd.com/@riseofthepixels/
Join us on Discord: https://discord.gg/e7cKB3KmsS

...or if you want to experience an authentic legacy Web2 vibe you can check out our X/Twitter profile: https://x.com/riseofthepixels



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12 comments
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I'm always a bit skeptical of community sourced content contests like this but on top of that, the prizes you're dangling to people who you're asking to write core content for your game are worth next to nothing. Top prize dev license, $8 value, and runner up a single 8-bit pack, $3 value. This is disappointing to see.

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Generally I agree with the ickiness of crowdsourcing creative. A few things are different in this case that makes me feel okay with this (and being the architect of it, frankly):

  1. This is far from 'core content.' I'm not even sure where or how the prose will appear in game. I'll be pushing for some sort of space for it, since I want to highlight the writing/concepts/authors that win.
  2. Given the above, the proportionality of effort here is somewhat reflected in the prize value. It's absolutely not fair market value for penning prose commercially, but the team members aren't earning anywhere near FMV for what they've built either. It's an indie project on a indie chain, so we're all taking a hit compared to FMV. By effort proportionality what I mean is this—this is some of the work I've done for the project. I'm paid as a % of sales, which currently is waaaaayyy under what I could make doing that sort of work commercially. The development work is even more skewed. So asking for a short story for some supplementary lore for some low $USD value prizes seems icky on the surface, but hopefully looks a little different when you consider that we're all kinda hobbyist entrepreneurs here.
  3. I can't ignore that I have an inherent bias since it was all my idea lol

Those arguments aside, your point is still worth considering. I've not fully done the math on the proportionality and since the team has "equity" one might argue apples and oranges (but are the prizes quasi-equity since they're assets and not cash? The plot thickens).

The easiest fix may be to consider healthier prizes. $100 worth per still ain't market value but it'd be substantial compared to most community-run prizes on Hive. BUT: our marketing budget is pretty teeny, and I'd argue that it might better spent on attracting new users to Hive via the game vs. ensuring very nice prizes for things like this.

Also wanna surface this to the other team members for candid discussion! ~ @asgarth @jarvie @yozen

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I think that the people who might not be able to justify expending the money to buy some packs but would be willing to write for you to earn them would probably write further and would have a potentially exponential value in terms of promotion. But not if they would likely pull a single common developer with their meager rewards.

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I fully support @jfuji and his vision on how to move forward on this.

A few considerations:

  • I'm totally open to increase the prize values
  • My understanding is that there will be multiple contests going forward and some authors can grab more than a single prize (compared to a single large contest with high prizes)
  • People still receive the Hive rewards for those posts and we can upvote or tip the best ones.
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(Edited)

I think it’s a great initiative that aim to involve users in the project and keep the community alive.
As for many contests in HIVE or even SL tournaments for example, in which I took part, often the amount of the reward itself does not seem to be enough to cover the effort/time spent, but there is perhaps the fun in participating in the contest that goes beyond the prize.

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this is a great contest. unfortunately my imagination not that good. good luck to everybody that goes for this!

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Fabulous! Wishing you all the very best with the new game! Glad to be a part of bringing writers into the fold to stretch their imaginations, and to challenge and flex their writing skills for the game lore. Dreem-WOTW contest post will drop this coming weekend on my account.

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I'm loving this. I wish I was tagged to this post first before the one on scholar and scribe. I could have placed less emphasis on the organization in my story and then saved it for WOTW. I still love it though.

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