Hello! Group-based ‘storytelling’ is on the rise, it’s still very niche, but no longer relegated to the kids in musty, candle-lit basements spellbound over a tabletop RPG with double dice.

We have the internet, the ultimate game. It’s global, accessible, and becoming more financially incentivized with tokens – for better or worse. How enchanting.

Inhabitable storyworlds necessitate primitive concepts... characters, creatures, traits, and items.

Idea imagined. That same group of kids can spin up a digital-first media company in an afternoon, and reach far more people (and earn far more income) than any film distributed by Sony Pictures Classics domestically in the last year or two. Sorry, but it’s true.

Revenge of the nerds, that fantasy is our constant reality.

I tweeted this last week… but I believe that “story as a service” is going to be a major opportunity in web3. Many popular projects are hiring full-time writers and paying them tech salaries, which tend to be a bit higher than WGA minimums. There’s a fundamental need to shape a satisfying story, to design a rock-solid foundation to be later built upon by the devoted community.

Layer cake, look at Loot.

Many of these web3 projects fall under CC0 licenses (which we covered last issue) and the general consensus is that any new derivative piece of IP created around the ecosystem will extend the project’s shelf-life and increase the value of the whole.

Audience-enabled. There are a few new inventive developments taking place in the tangled web, like incorporating the audience into the story itself (in name, avatar, or asset), and/or empowering them to write stories in tweets and discord servers. Fan fiction begins in the message boards, a platform with distribution. It’ll only get crazier from here; I’ve seen some wild pitches with interactive story mechanics that include tokenomics (i.e. burning, staking) to progress the story as gameplay.

Online society has grown pretty accustomed to team-based narratives, but those mostly those that encircle politics. Might as well contribute to story where you have some semblance of control and upside, rather than none at all.

That’s all for now. Thanks for reading. Open source stories. See ya next week.

Hello! Group-based ‘storytelling’ is on the rise, it’s still very niche, but no longer relegated to the kids in musty, candle-lit basements spellbound over a tabletop RPG with double dice.

We have the internet, the ultimate game. It’s global, accessible, and becoming more financially incentivized with tokens – for better or worse. How enchanting.

Inhabitable storyworlds necessitate primitive concepts... characters, creatures, traits, and items.

Idea imagined. That same group of kids can spin up a digital-first media company in an afternoon, and reach far more people (and earn far more income) than any film distributed by Sony Pictures Classics domestically in the last year or two. Sorry, but it’s true.

Revenge of the nerds, that fantasy is our constant reality.

I tweeted this last week… but I believe that “story as a service” is going to be a major opportunity in web3. Many popular projects are hiring full-time writers and paying them tech salaries, which tend to be a bit higher than WGA minimums. There’s a fundamental need to shape a satisfying story, to design a rock-solid foundation to be later built upon by the devoted community.

Layer cake, look at Loot.

Many of these web3 projects fall under CC0 licenses (which we covered last issue) and the general consensus is that any new derivative piece of IP created around the ecosystem will extend the project’s shelf-life and increase the value of the whole.

Audience-enabled. There are a few new inventive developments taking place in the tangled web, like incorporating the audience into the story itself (in name, avatar, or asset), and/or empowering them to write stories in tweets and discord servers. Fan fiction begins in the message boards, a platform with distribution. It’ll only get crazier from here; I’ve seen some wild pitches with interactive story mechanics that include tokenomics (i.e. burning, staking) to progress the story as gameplay.

Online society has grown pretty accustomed to team-based narratives, but those mostly those that encircle politics. Might as well contribute to story where you have some semblance of control and upside, rather than none at all.

That’s all for now. Thanks for reading. Open source stories. See ya next week.