Atocha Monthly Newsletter — October22

Atocha Monthly Newsletter — October22

GM Atocha Fam! We want to kickstart this monthly newsletter update for the community to get up to speed on what we have achieved last month and what’s next for this particular month. This will allow the community to have better clarity on the development and collaboration that is going on. Of course, it also ensures that we, as the core team members are always working our way towards our ultimate goal — building a global puzzle game infrastructure + community.

In this monthly newsletter, there will be 3 segments:

1. Past month’s progress and achievement
2. Current month’s roadmap and goal
3. Words from the team

Past Month Progress and Achievement

1. NEAR2ATO Treasure Hunt for NEARCON2022 Side Event Launching
2. Physical participation on NEARCON2022 (come and say hi to us if you are around!)
3. Partnership with Near Ecosystem through NEAR2ATO Treasure Hunt
4. Launch of puzzle game landing page (no need of web3 wallet to interact)
5. Social following & ATO holders update:

Atocha Protocol at NEARCON2022 with NEAR Team Lisbon

Preparation Before NEARCON2022

We decided to go for NEARCON2022 at the end of July 2022. Since then, we have made up our mind that we should organize a side event in conjunction with this grand annual event of Near ecosystem. Within a week's time, we came up with the idea of gathering 30 projects within the Near ecosystem under one side event, NEAR2ATO Treasure Hunt. The idea is to cross-promote the participating projects, encourage interaction and giveaway some rewards to the community.

The idea was well accepted by the Partners and there were also numerous Sponsors that put up a great number of rewards too. We would like to thank Octopus Network, QSTN, Paras NFT Marketplace, 3six9 NFT Marketplace, Near Foundation (NEARCON), Mr. Brown NFT, and Roketo for generously sponsoring the side event’s Grand Prize (but was returned respectively to the Partners due to an untowards event).

With that in mind, we proceed to the communication and setting up for the treasure hunt which includes works like:

1. Communication with all participating projects on the terms and sponsors
2. Setting up the treasure hunt website
3. Preparation of content (puzzles, graphics)
4. Social media announcements (Twitter, Medium, Telegram, Discord)

Touchdown In Lisbon

Once we touched down in Lisbon, we get to get around the city and explore the culture and architecture of the place. It was indeed a great experience to interact with the Portuguese as well who frankly speaking, were very friendly and helpful.

Before the party kickstarted in NEARCON2022, we had a moment to have a taste of what the city had to offer. The food was marvellous and succulent as well. A location well picked by Near Foundation!

As NEARCON2022 will kickstart on 11th September 2022 and end on 14th September 2022, we have decided to be there earlier to connect with people and do some preparation beforehand. The decision was just right as the whole schedule was not as rushed.

Octopus Network NAVIO Party

We are thrilled to be invited as one of the presenters for the Octopus Network NAVIO Party taking place on the 11th of September 2022 at Praca Do Commercio.

We were glad that the Partners that were part of the NEAR2ATO Treasure Hunt were mentioned during the presentation which was around 50 over attendees consisting of media, VCs, project lead and community leaders.

This was a good platform for Atocha Protocol to spread the message about the Treasure Hunt and also getting to connect IRL with builders within and beyond the ecosystem. We were thankful to Octopus Network for such an opportunity.

NEARCON2022 — IRL Meeting

During the NEARCON2022, we get to meet up with our most supportive Partners, connect IRL to update about what’s Atocha Protocol future direction and also learn what’s new within the ecosystem. We were lucky to be able to connect with some of the most innovative and strong tech builders and community builders in Near ecosystem.

The IRL meetings were fruitful as we were able to learn more about each other, especially about the future direction and the focus area for each of the respective projects. With a clear understanding of each other, there can be more collaborations to be initiated in the following months.

NEAR2ATO Treasure Hunt

The NEAR2ATO Treasure Hunt was successfully carried out throughout NEARCON2022. The side event generated great traction from the community to interact with the 30 puzzles created to increase the project awareness for the participating Partners. Through the side event, we learned a great deal about how to better organize such a large collaboration in the near future. Here are some insights that we had after compiling from the post-mortem of the side event itself.

1. Have a clear rule guidebook before kickstarting the game, this will help reduce the misinformation and misunderstanding about the playbook for any game. Besides, the players will have a sense of fairness in the game as the rule is published before the commencement of the game.
2. Have a clearer focus on the number of Partners involved within one single event. This will help to narrow down and congregate the attention gathered for the specific event. With that, all participating Partners will have better exposure and engagement.
3. Have more automation mechanisms to manage and organize the reward distribution, judging of winners and management of queries. This will largely reduce the friction created due to the delay in response, misunderstanding of communication and speculation of unfair practice.
4. Have a combined budget for marketing like targeted marketing with SEO and advertisement. In addition, every campaign created should have a better call to action so that every dollar spent is well worth it.
5. Have a theme with a better visual and user experience. We learned from the players’ feedback that the interface for the treasure hunt was somehow confusing and hard to manoeuvre. We will look into the design of the interface and improve the game experience in the future launch.
6. Have a mechanism that can reduce the participation of spam bots. This is crucial to all as spam bots will only encroach on the benefits of the community. Of course, it is impossible to 100% free of bots but the ratio of it can be largely reduced with intentional design for the puzzle gameplay.

NEAR2ATO Treasure Hunt has received over 150 participants for the 30 puzzle games created and also over 50 unique participants that were competing for the Grand Prize. The turnout rate was satisfactory. Nevertheless, we learned the lesson of setting a clear and strict timeline for the puzzle game as the Final Puzzle turned out to be disputed by some of the Players. The end result was we decided not to take any of the sponsor funds for the Grand Prize which prove that we stand strong as a team to create a fair and just game.

Here is the key announcement post about the event:

1. The launch of NEAR2ATO Treasure Hunt
2. The Post Mortem of NEAR2ATO Treasure Hunt
3. The 30 Puzzle Winners Announcement

The Possibilities Beyond

From NEARCON2022, we look forward to utilising what we have gained throughout the event be it good or bad. The future is bright and we really see that Atocha Protocol has something to offer to the community based on the experience of launching different models of puzzle games.

Here are some of the features that we are working on:

1. Multiple stages puzzle creation mechanism
2. Ticketing creation mechanism
3. Hidden message mechanism
4. Google street view mechanism

All of these will be implemented in stages with some testing done by the team and a handful of community members. Also, these features are intended to be tested by the community by end of the year as we are looking to launch the Treasure Hunt Version 2.0.

One more thing that we want to highlight is the focus that revolves around our product development for Atocha Protocol. The main intention is to create an infrastructure that enables CREATORS to create games that could ultimately become a revenue stream for them. Through the features that will be implemented like ticketing creation mechanism, the CREATORS can then create tickets in the form of NFT that could become the source of income for their games launching on Atocha Protocol. Besides, the ATOCHA POINT SYSTEM could be also an incentives to leverage different CREATORS’ community to cross support different genres of games launching on the protocol. This will become a self sustaining ecosystem where more and more CREATORS are incentivize to build on Atocha Protocol due to the features that promote stickiness for the Players and convenience of creating transparent and easy to use revenue generation tool.

Current Month Roadmap and Goals

1. Planning for the Treasure Hunt Version 2.0 (4th Quarter Goal)
2. Octopus Day with Octopus Network
3. Close collaboration with 1 Creator for game creation
4. Close collaboration with 1 non-crypto brand for game creation
5. Revamping website/game interface (4th Quarter continuous effort)
6. Development for the mentioned features (4th Quarter Goal)

Words From The Team

We want to sincerely thanks to all the support that we get from the community especially from the project teams that we are partnering with giving us great support and also trust when things turn south. This really shows how priceless for a good relationship can be and we are grateful for that. With that, we want to become stronger and build better product/services for the community. Of course, this will not come easy as constant improving of product and searching for the market fit is a marathon.

We also would like to standby the community members that have been supporting us since the beginning. Even though the team had gone through some misjudgement of trust by some, most of the community members are still standing by the team. This is something that can’t be bought and we appreciate that deeply. With that, what we want to say is that we will continue to work on our goal which is to create a Creator enabling tool for the puzzle game Creators. Of course, the goal may change as we evolve and explore a deeper desire by the users. Without the help from the community, we think the journey will be even harder. Hence, kudos to all who are still being with us and participating in the games that we organized.

Looking forward to see you all in the next Treasure Hunt!

Thank you for spending your time reading our newsletter. We look forward to having you join our community and be part of the contributor (be it as a player, creator, or sponsor).

We are always on the lookout for Partners to collaborate with. Feel free to reach out to us via DMing our Twitter account or reach out to the admin on Telegram/Discord.

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