Creating a Battle Pass system with NFT wearables - 100Avatars Garden in Decentraland
The 100Avatars Garden project was introduced in Decentraland in early January following a grant process in which Polygonal Mind submitted a development plan and received funding from the Decentraland DAO
Premise
Creating engaging and rewarding experiences is crucial for retaining users and establishing a strong community and brand presence. By offering incentives and rewards, users are encouraged to continue participating in the product, resulting in higher retention rates and sustained community interest.
Mission
Our goal is to foster constant engagement through a season pass system that allows users to progress at their own pace without feeling rushed, while consistenly rewarding them for their participation. By respecting users’ time and offering unique experiences, we aim to create a cycle of engagement that drives in high player numbers and increases time spent in the scene.
Case Study: 100Avatars Garden from Decentraland
Introduction
The 100Avatars Garden project was introduced in Decentraland in early January following a grant process in which Polygonal Mind submitted a development plan and received funding from the Decentraland DAO. The plan involved adapting the original 100Avatars VRMs (Round 1) to the Decentraland standard and implementing an unlocking method based on mini-games requiring 5-10 min to complete.
Resources
To develop this development, we used:
3D Modelling Toolkits
- Blender
- Autodesk Maya
- Substance Painter
Development environment
- Unity Editor 2022.3.12f1
- Decentraland SDK7 Toolkit for Unity
Decentraland Land
- Polygonal Mind-operated land in South Decentraland, owned by MOMUS
Background
Initially created for VRChat in 2019, the 100Avatars Garden has since expanded to other platforms as the collection and concept evolved. Today, the Avatar Garden is available on four different platforms, each differentwith its own distribution, engagement and rewarding approach. It can be found on Spatial, VRChat, Hyperfy and Decentraland.
Development
The project development began in November as an in-house initiative by the Polygonal Mind team. Initially, it was intended as a project compatible with the latest SDK7 Toolkit for the Unity Editor, which was also developed by our team. To ensure the project’s viability for the studio and maintain its free-to-play nature, we applied for a DAO grant. This grant mainly covered the minting fees for the 100 wearable skins that were to be submitted.
The base visuals were extracted from the source project, which was an environment inspired by Gauguin paintingscreated for VRChat in Unity. These visuals were then ported to the Decentraland platform. Leveraging existing assets from the source project allowed us to expedit the development process within the tight timeline.
Additionally,it provided us with an initial art direction that could be expanded upon with newer assets. Custom props were also developed as needed for this project.
Gamification
A fundamental aspect we aimed for in the scene was to keep development simple while implementing effective gameplay. Rather than reinventing the wheel, our focus was on remaining classic concepts that could retain a social component.
We brainstormed ideas on the Decentraland SDK7, drawing inspiration from mini-games found in Nintendo 64, Mario Party and other titles. After careful consideration, we narrowed down our options to four clear ideas that would be considered for development in the scene.
We considered a game of matching cards, a Wanted!-like game, the classic Hit-The-Mole game game-play and a Frog-Jump game to be a good fit for the SDK7 capabilities and also development time wise.
Once the scope was settled and the grant approved, we made the design decision to create 3 mini-games, randomizing each day the gameplay a user would be experiencing.
01 Pair-adise Found
This game is similar to Memorama, where players must match pairs of cards within 1 minute and 30 seconds. Each successful match earns the player 1 point, and the goal to accumulate as many points as possible.
Some of the challenges we found while developing this game included:
- Implementing deck shufflingto ensure that card positions are randomized.
- Creating a mechanism to check if cards have flipped or not.
- Managing cards transformations, including positions and rotations.
- Implementing a system to check if the player has completed the matching round.
02 Hammercide
The classic hit-the-mole game, we put a twist on the art to ensure that the focus remained on the 100Avatars avatars or environment as the main visual source. The objective is straightforward: avatars emerge from holes, and players must hit the correct avatar before they retrat back into their holes.
By adding a time constraint and rewarding each correct hit with a point, we created an engaging version of a simple mini-game in Decentraland. This game tests players’ reflexes and rewards the fastest player.
03 Sticky Business
Building upon the visuals previously create to promote the 100Avatars project as stickers for platforms like WhatsApp, Telegram or LINE, we incorporated elements fromthe Wanted! mini-game from the Nintendo 64.
In this mini-game, players must find the correct sticker among a set of options. If they select the correct sticker, they earn additional seconds of playtime; however, selecting the wrong sticker results in a deduction of playtime. This simple yet engaging game challenges users’ perception and encourages interaction.
User experience and reward system
As the gamification was aspects were defined and developed, it became crucial to clarify and establish how users would be introduced to the scene and understand its mission and goals. This is where user experience (UX) design became essential.
We began by splitting the area into zones, each focusing on a specific aspect. Given that this project includes rewards, games and information, we split the map into four chunks: Leaderboard, Playtime, Unlockables and Information. Each area was designed to fulfill a specific mission, allowing users to navigate the information effectively and engage with the scene accordingly.
The most fundamental aspect of user experience is introduction. Therefore, we opted for an avatar — specifically, a Cool Banana — that guides the player throughout the whole experience. This avatar explains each area of the scene and also provides random tips, injecting personality into the NPC behavior and enhancing the overall user experience.
To increase the competitive aspect of the experience, each game not only is randomized but also features individual leaderboards. This challenges players to beat the scores of others while aiming to surpass the threshold. If a player can’t beat the threshold, they can wait until the next day to take another chance in a different game. This adds en element of anticipation and encourages repeated engagement with the scene.
Once we finalized what the user would experience each day they logged in, we focused on implementing the rewarding system: how users could obtain an avatar every day.
In the scene, there is a backend server that interacts with logged-in users and records their performance. This functionality enables the existance of leaderboards and metrics, but it also facilitates the implementation of a reward system.
Using this backend functionality, we keep track of the avatar mint campaign that a user should engage with (there are 100 avatars, one per avatar). When a user completes the daily tasks, the server sends a signal to the corresponding redeem campaign, allowing the user to claim the wearable avatar. This seamless integration ensures that users are appropiately rewarded for their engagement with the scene.
But what’s a campaign, and how does this work? We need to dive into the creation of the wearables and the campaigns set for each.
100Avatars collection
Our task was to convert 100 VRM files into 100 GLBs that meet Decentraland avatar requirements. This process involved not only transporting the rig but also adjusting the proportions to ensure that they all matched the same height, among other considerations.
After completing the task of converting VRMs to GLBs and aligning their respective bone conventions, we proceeded to create the collection in the Decentraland system. However, Decentraland has a limit of to 50 wearables per collection, so we had to split the 100Avatars in two collections to accomodate this limitation, Additionally, we provided one render per skin wearable created.
Setting up the campaigns
Once our collections were approved, we could create the campaigns to distribute the wearables within our land. Previously, a campaign had to be set up by Decentraland.However, the campaigns site was recently made public, allowing creators to set up their own campaigns. To set up a campaign, you first need to have your collection of wearables approved. Each campaign has a wallet address associated with it. You will need to add this address as a minter to the wearable collection, as well as send gas (Matic) to start the campaign.
By default, a campaign is on hold until you add both these components. Is also important to regulate the Gwei to be spent on each transaction during the campaign.
Deployment & launch
Several tests were conducted during the development in the testing catalyst from Decentraland to ensure that UX and design overall were aligned with our goals. Once we were ready and prepared for a real redeem test, we moved to deployment in public lands, and it proved to be working as expected.
With these final tests completed, we were ready to launch on the 9th of January. We created an event and announced it in the Decentraland community. Thisannouncement attracted a huge number of users to the experience, initially as an opportunity to get something for free, and then they returned for more and continued playing.
This led us to welcome the year with an experience that, in the first week alone, attracted more than 500 new users and continued to draw them in, reaching a total of 2,500 visits. The average time spent by users was 15 minutes, indicating that the purpose of the land and its design were effective. We aimed users to play, receive their reward quickly, and return the next day to unlock something unique. A season pass featuring 100 avatars was available to all users.
Conclusion
The metrics, design and concept prove that a season pass is attractive to users in Decentraland, as well as in any platform where the users are encouraged to engage with a product. With this development, we have not only created a testing ground for ourselves with SDK7 and the toolkit but also provided something fresh, unique and accessible to all types of users a platform can have.
