▼What is this?

High-quality, commercially viable video games can be developed by creative individuals from any discipline. Combine this with the massive global video games market and ubiquity of vibe coding infrastructure, and it is reasonable to assume that a well-organized group of creatives could democratically run a FULL-SERVICE video game publishing cooperative that taps into existing solidarity infrastructures facilitated by my friends in the Bread Coop.

The Mark of the Covenant

To truly establish this covenant, I am going to essentially reproduce the original markdown file associated with $TRUTH01 that was created using the Metagovernance Lab's Community Rule Tool . Essentially, this document serves to provide an explicit imprint of what Dumbphone Deliverance's governance structure looked when this first truth was canonized.

Out-of-the-Box Values

The following values are essentially defined exactly as they come in the modules from Community Rule.

Membership

Participation is open to anyone who wants to join, but Simon reserves the right to remove participants at will while this truth is in effect.

Decaying Autocracy

Simon has the authority to change the group's governance as necessary. When the group is sufficiently mature, he will establish a more inclusive structure through $TRUTH02.

Executive

Simon is responsible for implementing-or delegating implementation of-policies and other decisions

Visionary Values

The following values are those that I put a little more sauce into. These are the ones that I have the highest faith in remaining steadfast within the organization. Some of them are related to the novel affordances of the Stack, others are just tried-and-true organizing principles.

Code of Conduct

Participants agree to abide by certain standards or face certain consequences. A system measures and evaluates participants' behavior, weighing their relative rights and credibility accordingly.

Friendship

If I have not completely lost my mind, Dumbphone Deliverance will be able to slowly close itself off into COMPLETE infrastructural and productive independence, finally freeing itself from the closed platform hegemon. This isolation process necessitates strong culture building and civic friendship. Relationships among participants will facilitate or inhibit governance processes.

Norms and Rituals

Informally agreed-on practices or beliefs. This module will require a more complex interplay between the URL and IRL, but is especially related to ritual. The easiest way to define and understand ritual would be a repeated cultural practice that builds solidarity and community. There is no better breakdown or understanding of the importance of ritual than in The Path: What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us About the Good Life (Puett & Gross-Loh, 2016)

Purpose

DPD members are united by a single mission: creating thoughtful, innovative, and enjoyable interactive media experiences. While the distribution of resources and means of production is incredibly political, this should not hamper our ability to reach the widest possible audience for our games.

Solidarity

A commitment to mutual support allows us to realize the untapped potential in experimenting with new organizational forms.

Proof of Work

Power in decision-making is proportionate to a participant's labor for the community. It is no coincidence this value is bar-for-bar related to distributed ledger technology. The work required to bring a video game to market is immense and varied. The value of that work should be defined by the disciplinary experts in the organization. Maybe the highest elected disciplinary experts in all the defined relevant fields can negotiate pay rates for each project.

Lobby Until $TRUTH02

The first public beacon into the Dumbphone Deliverance world came in the form of a blog located at https://paragraph.com/@dumbphone-deliverance . Within the DPD discord server, I have logged the owner of that blog's wallet address, and tokenized the first article with the ticker $TRUTH01 . Possession of this token allows access to the open conversation rooms where $TRUTH02 will be created. $TRUTH02 will NOT be minted until there is proper internal infrastructure in-place that would allow us to collectively monetize the first public demo of Subkuch through Steam. I hold all the keys until then

Variety Consensus

Before decisions are made, a variety of consensus mechanisms will be taken into account (an unscientific mix of all other modules in this rule). The next big goal is the minting of $TRUTH02. The actual contents and strategy of $TRUTH02 will be determined in accordance with these consensus mechanisms.
Aura-farming Buff

Seniority isn't everything. Participants also gain authority according to their excellence by shared standards. This is what I like to call the aura farming buff.

ruleID: '1766235500407'
timestamp: 2025.12.20 12:58:37 UTC
icon: ''
name: Dumbphone Deliverance
lineage: ''
summary: >-
  12-20-2025


  Currently, Dumbphone Deliverance is incorporated as an LLC in the state of
  Minnesota under the sole ownership of the author of this rule, Simon Deutsch.
  This marks the first draft at legitimizing a roadmap towards a non-profit
  worker co-operative. 


  To summarize, here is but one provocation:


  High-quality, commercially viable video games can be developed from the
  perspective of creative individuals who practice in any discipline. Combine
  this with the massive global video games market and ubiquity of vibe coding
  infrastructure, and it is reasonable to assume that a well-organized group of
  creatives could democratically run a FULL-SERVICE video game publishing
  cooperative that taps into existing solidarity infrastructures facilitated by
  my friends in the Bread Coop.
creator:
  name: Dumbphone Deliverance
  url: https://dumbphone-deliverance.com
modules:
  - moduleID: values
    name: Values
    icon: null
    summary: Servant leadership, singular vision, voluntarism
    modules: []
  - moduleID: membership
    name: Membership
    icon: null
    summary: >-
      Participation is open to anyone who wants to join, but the Benevolent
      Dictator can remove participants at will.
    modules: []
  - moduleID: autocracy
    name: Autocracy
    icon: null
    summary: >-
      The Benevolent Dictator has authority and can change the group's
      governance as necessary.
    modules:
      - moduleID: delegation
        name: Delegation
        icon: null
        summary: >-
          The Benevolent Dictator can invite participants to help with managing 
          the group.
        modules: []
      - moduleID: expiration
        name: Expiration
        icon: null
        summary: >-
          When the group is sufficiently mature, the Benevolent  Dictator will
          establish a more inclusive structure.
        modules: []
      - moduleID: executive
        name: Executive
        icon: null
        summary: >-
          The Benevolent Dictator is responsible for implementing—or delegating
          implementation of—policies and other decisions.
        modules: []
      - moduleID: lobbying
        name: Lobbying
        icon: null
        summary: >-
          If participants are not happy with the Benevolent Dictator's
          leadership, they may voice their concerns or leave the group.
        modules: []
  - moduleID: friendship
    name: Friendship
    icon: https://communityrule.info/assets/tabler_icons/heart.svg
    summary: >-
      If I have not completely lost my mind, Dumbphone Deliverance will be able
      to slowly close itself off into COMPLETE infrastructural and productive
      independence, finally freeing itself from the closed platform hegemon.
      This isolation process necessitates strong culture building and civic
      friendship. Relationships among participants will facilitate or inhibit
      governance processes.
    config: {}
    type: culture
    modules: []
  - moduleID: norms
    name: Norms
    icon: https://communityrule.info/assets/tabler_icons/rotate.svg
    summary: >-
      Informally agreed-on practices or beliefs. This module will require a more
      complex interplay between the URL and IRL, but is especially related to
      another module, Ritual.
    config: {}
    type: culture
    modules: []
  - moduleID: purpose
    name: Purpose
    icon: https://communityrule.info/assets/tabler_icons/map.svg
    summary: >-
      DPD workers are united by a single mission: creating thoughtful,
      innovative, and enjoyable interactive media experiences. While the
      distribution of resources and means of production is incredibly political,
      this should not hamper our ability to reach the widest possible audience
      for our games.
    config: {}
    type: culture
    modules: []
  - moduleID: ritual
    name: Ritual
    icon: https://communityrule.info/assets/tabler_icons/palette.svg
    summary: >-
      A repeated cultural practice builds solidarity and community. There is no
      better breakdown or understanding of the importance of ritual than in The
      Path: What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us About the Good Life (Puett &
      Gross-Loh, 2016)
    config:
      Frequency: ''
    type: culture
    modules: []
  - moduleID: solidarity
    name: Solidarity
    icon: https://communityrule.info/assets/tabler_icons/palette.svg
    summary: >-
      A commitment to mutual support allows us to realize the untapped potential
      in experimenting with new organizational forms.
    config: {}
    type: culture
    modules: []
  - moduleID: proof_of_work
    name: Proof of Work
    icon: https://communityrule.info/assets/tabler_icons/coin.svg
    summary: >-
      Power in decision-making is proportionate to a participant's labor for the
      community. The work required to bring a video game to market is immense
      and varied. The value of that work should be defined by the disciplinary
      experts in the organization.
    config: {}
    type: decision
    modules: []
  - moduleID: meritocracy
    name: Meritocracy
    icon: https://communityrule.info/assets/tabler_icons/rotate.svg
    summary: >-
      Participants gain authority according to their excellence by shared
      standards.
    config: {}
    type: process
    modules: []
  - moduleID: code_of_conduct
    name: Code of Conduct
    icon: https://communityrule.info/assets/tabler_icons/rotate.svg
    summary: >-
      Participants agree to abide by certain standards or face certain
      consequences. A system measures and evaluates participants' behavior,
      weighing their relative rights and credibility accordingly.
    config: {}
    type: process
    modules: []
  - moduleID: variety-consensus
    name: Variety Consensus
    icon: https://communityrule.info/assets/tabler_icons/thumb-up.svg
    summary: >-
      Before decisions are made, a variety of consensus mechanisms will be taken
      into account (an unscientific mix of all other modules in this rule). The
      next big goal is the minting of $TRUTH02. The actual contents and strategy
      of $TRUTH02 will be determined in accordance with these consensus
      mechanisms.
    config: {}
    type: process
    modules: []
  - moduleID: lobby-until-truth02
    name: Lobby until $TRUTH02
    icon: https://communityrule.info/assets/tabler_icons/rotate.svg
    summary: >-
      The first public beacon into the Dumbphone Deliverance world came in the
      form of a blog located at https://paragraph.com/@dumbphone-deliverance .
      Within the DPD discord server, I have logged the owner of that blog's
      wallet address, and tokenized the first article with the ticker $TRUTH01 .
      Possession of this token allows access to the open conversation rooms
      where $TRUTH02 will be created. $TRUTH02 will NOT be minted until there is
      proper internal infrastructure in-place that would allow us to
      collectively monetize the first public demo of Subkuch through Steam. I
      hold all the keys until then
    config: {}
    type: process
    modules: []

▼AI DISCLOSURE

TLDR:

I'm vibe-coding my own prototype of what I imagine to be going on behind the scenes at DFOS, essentially a worker co-operative video game publisher that finances digital infrastructure needs for the creative scene, incorporating Bread Cooperatives' solidarity primitives to ensure rapid, even splits. The bottom of the document details instructions for those interested in participating or observing the brainstorming process.

A Note for the Chronically-Online

In the last year, I have been delivered from the burden of carrying a smartphone outside the house. Despite occasionally getting caught out without directions to the next bus stop, or having my card decline and having to run home because I don't have access to mobile banking, I don't regret it. Perhaps I don't regret it because I also logged a cumulative watch time on Twitch (1,556 hours) that would call into question the distinction between me and "chat." Aside from being a huge recession indicator in my own personal touch-grass economy, this incongruency also spawned Dumbphone Deliverance. When I stand up from my desktop and walk away, I become exponentially less reachable.

The central tension here is that being online is awesome lol. But seriously, when I decide to go out and touch grass, that's it. Simon Reynolds discussed the internet and its ability to compress cultural development. The weight of the past is significant to Reynolds, but what's also significant is the weight of the present. The walled gardens of our digital infrastructure have contained the culture makers and unilaterally imposed, from the top down, a set of restrictions on exactly how these cultural producers can reproduce themselves and earn a respectable wage. Gaming the algorithm is a central consideration for anybody who wants to publish anything that they want to reach a significant audience.

There is a reactionary tendency to insist on an all-or-nothing solution to this bizarre post-humanist malaise: either you cast aside technology, or you spend your days lobbying Elon Musk on X: the Everything App (2025 X Corp) for fewer safeguards on Grok's Sexy mode.

Dumbphone Deliverance is a project that aims to reconcile this seemingly irreconcilable tension between our IRL and URL selves in 2025. Frankly, being online right now is a miserable experience (though it can be quite pleasant in some places, as we'll soon discuss). Where the URL was once a great place to escape some of the most biting realities of real life, enshittification has caused these places to become increasingly inhospitable. The use of the royal 'we' in this article is not a deliberate attempt to obscure the plurality of the authorial perspective. What follows was authored hastily by me, Simon Deutsch (@simonsiminsimo), on X: the Everything App (2025 X Corp). I'm a Zoomer from a middle-class background. I had a Facebook account in 4th grade. Unlike some of my peers in my age cohort, the incurable brain rot from MLG memes did not evolve long enough to land me in a comms role on Ron DeSantis' campaign. I represent an archetype that comes from asking daring questions: like, is it possible for a sensitive young white-boy to get a little esoteric with it IN OPPOSITION to fascism?

What is Dumbphone Deliverance?

To be clear, Dumbphone Deliverance is an Independent Game Studio with the primary purpose of developing thoughtful interactive media experiences. It's hard to earn a living as a creative, and the rapid development of Agential AI has only heightened those pressures. Our belief is that robust, independent technological infrastructure and a healthy community are the most valuable resources we can leverage. We use political means to accomplish these goals, but they are the good ones. We are a centrist organization, honestly, ostensibly apolitical. Out of the seeming absurdity of it all, we adopt the trademark Gen Z sincere-irony to embrace deliverance within the crease of the most grayscale Nokia flip-phone we can find. Our first project will be a rogue-lite "pedal board-builder" rhythm game in the style of Guitar Hero and Balatro. It is still in its early stages (you can express interest in playtesting on our Discord server linked below).

I want these sentiments to define the North Star of the studio: a wider vision and the associated provocations that require exploration. If you're reading this article, then you're likely not the specific people we are targeting for this game in the first place, so I don't feel the need to promote it too heavily (it's really fun and the music is badass, though, if you were wondering). If you're reading this article, you likely clicked on it directly from one of the dark forests where I feel comfortable in this networked hellscape. In which case, I'd like to invite you to collaborate. The vision expressed herewithin is the result of years of curiosity and experimentation with emergent forms of sustaining creative communities. I've worked in and around the realms of crypto and politics, pop music, and library science. It's likely that everyone here came from one of these realms or another, and that some of this rambling has seemed coherent while the rest indecipherable.

This is a flare into the night of the so-called "dark forest" of the Internet. Dumbphone Deliverance is not a private project; access to the Discord server is not gated. Reasonably, anybody could stumble on this article and become a participant. What distinguishes this space from the major walled gardens is that our social and material relations are defined by explicitly different goals and political processes - ones that prize democratic participation and fostering of solidarity economies. The ideas I want to explore are too vast to be comprehensively summarized in a single article like this. Many things I touch on here may never be mentioned again within the Dumbphone Deliverance Discord community, but I'd be happy to carry on those conversations in the contexts where they're most suited for productive discussion. In the writing that follows, I will reference some key works and communities as I describe my vision for what Dumbphone Deliverance can become. Most often, these conversations are better suited for these communities and contexts, and I urge you to explore them further and engage with them in good faith, as they merit. I hope this article can facilitate an interchange between people in these communities, who may be able to see some of their ideas and concepts embodied in the Dumbphone Deliverance model, and the intended beneficiaries and stewards of DPD, who can provide invaluable insights and networks of solidarity as we try to challenge an increasing encroachment on the sovereignty of the global netizen.

The Stack

Over the last two years or so, Joshua Citarella has put on a master class in leveraging the constraints and affordances of an algorithmically driven media environment to shape a message and cultivate a specific kind of audience. What works about this approach is the way it reveals how the internet facilitates the organization of Netizens into different types of interactions with a thoughtfully designed corpus of texts. Citarella has most openly revealed this program through his syllabi, but Doomscroll is a YouTube success that will remain a valuable resource for people of all political sorts. The syllabus is released once a year, following lively discourse facilitated through Do Not Research (DNR). Doomscroll has become critical community infrastructure. Citarella is not the only person behind Doomscroll. Collaborators on the show are also heavily involved in DNR. Success for Doomscroll then has a second-level impact on the productive capabilities of DNR. I'm not writing to speculate. What is challenging about sustaining an independent creative endeavour like podcasting is the fickle nature of monetization. You run into the same issue as musicians do, where the price of a listen is just not enough to pay the bills.

The world of independent video game development is different. Access to the largest markets (Steam, Nintendo Switch, Xbox, etc.) often comes with a price (30% in the case of Steam), but the creator of a video game is given more direct leverage or agency in the exact price at which their work is valued. Musicians and podcasters have no such choice. Game development also synergizes well with a heavy investment in technical infrastructure and could reasonably be considered to steward an infrastructural apparatus for a collective of artists who rely on the infrastructure.

If you were to look into the future with a crystal ball, these markets will be able to demand less and less of a cut for condoning off their audiences. Consider access to Steam a great place to sell the game to a wider, popular audience, but hopefully converting them to an alternative platform like Metalabel in the future, where they can keep up with and easily access future Dumbphone Deliverance-related releases, even if they are not video games.

Developing video games for commercial sale presents an opportunity that the left has traditionally failed to take as seriously as it should be. To bring a well-crafted game to market requires the skill and collaboration of highly specialized and talented professionals with such a diverse array of skillsets that just about any person who dreams of pursuing an independent creative career possesses some type of skill-set that could be of direct use in game publishing (photographers, musicians, writers, programmers, etc.) If we're honest, the less glamorous elements of an independent creative career are often some of the most direct impediments to popular reach (there is not one person who really wants to spend their afternoon doing influencer outreach).

Next Steps

Individually, I am committed to the democratic distribution of any productive outcomes that result from the development of our first project. Any open proceedings for this next phase will be taking place behind the 'Verified' role in the Dumbphone Deliverance Discord server (button below). There are two ways to get the role:

1. Have a Mod vouch for you (you know them prior to joining, or you're a positive contributor to the open community)

2. Mint this article and have the $TRUTH01 token in your wallet.

Price: at least 1 $BREAD (higher contributions will not result in greater stake or participation in DPD's productivity)

The portability of a screen should be inversely proportional to the degree to which that device enables you to embody your post-humanist inheritance. - 12/18/2025

Don't have $BREAD? What the hell even is crypto? Reach out to me on the Discord server, and we can chat about it!