3..2…1… Leap!!
Ribbit fellow hoppers.
What a week it has been. The Notorious Frogs public sale is live and underway right now, but as you know this project is about more than just simple player avatars and NFT profile pictures. We’re here to build a collaborative social space for people and species of all backgrounds.
What people generally imagine when they think of a metaverse is what we saw in ‘Ready Player One’. An online, persistent shared space populated by characters from some of our favorite movies and games. The problem is that imagination runs ahead of technology as a great deal of popular IP are locked inside walled gardens, having been created long before the dream of decentralization became a reality.
With that in mind, it makes sense that a new kind of IP is needed for the metaverse — something that takes into account the very nature of collaboration and community as well as the underlying blockchain technology. We believe that IP is already being created in the form of NFT avatar projects. However, these two dimensional avatars don’t have a virtual space they can call home, let alone with a look and feel that matches their aesthetic.
Our goal is to build something new using the power of crypto NFT crowdfunding to break the traditional model of game development that relies on the dubious task of convincing stuffy executives to fund a project they’ll never even play. We’ve felt since day one that sharing success with the community is crucial to realizing that objective.
By introducing a sale of 10,000 generative Notorious Frogs, we can raise the capital required to bootstrap the development of a next generation metaverse with zones and districts styled after the avatar projects that inhabit them. A space rich in narrative and designed from the ground up to feature gamified elements not yet seen in other spaces.
We are pleased to announce that New Pangea has already raised enough funding during the presale alone to start development on the new world. Our friends at Dream Reality Interactive have been hopping around with excitement ready to get started so we’re not going to hold them back. Development is starting immediately and will ramp up over the coming weeks and months. Here’s a brief outline of what to expect as the world gets built.
Feature Toadmap
Since starting the project a few short months ago the team has received a massive inflow of ideas and concepts that could be used in New Pangea. KEEP ’EM COMING because we’ll be working to create a product backlog that captures everything and organizes what’s possible and when it can be delivered. We’ll publish regular updates on the Toadmap as the project progresses.
Primary Development
As primary development gets underway, there will be several core teams working towards common goals from different perspectives. Here’ a rough outline of what that looks like:
- Technical Design — the technical design team will focus on key infrastructure and interfaces that make the world function. Tasks such as executing deployments, setting up databases, interacting with the blockchain, and building user experiences that are outside of the game world are just some of the tasks this team will be working on.
- Game Design — the game design team will be focused on all aspects of playability within the 3D world. This team will focus on tasks such as developing the world map, routing players through streets, rendering in-game assets consistently, ensuring static and dynamic models work well together, and other tasks specific to the 3D world.
- Art Direction — the art direction team will be focused on bringing artistic concepts into reality and ensuring that the textures, colors, lighting, and general styles of different assets are consistent and true to theme.
- Demo — the demo team will be a cross-disciplinary team with skills in other areas who are focused on bringing together all of the work from the other teams to build the first iteration of New Pangea.
We can’t wait for New Pangea to manifest into reality. A ‘Greenpaper’ is having the finishing touches applied over the next couple of weeks which will outline both the lore and the ‘Toadmap’ in thorough detail for the Metaverse. We see New Pangea as a pioneering project, one that will break the mold of conventional funding models by bootstrapping its entire development process funded by the community, no longer reliant on institutional finance that dilutes the founders’ vision.
Story Arcs
One thing that sets the Notorious Frogs of Frogland apart is the vibrant, multifaceted story. We are overwhelmed by the amazing support and creativity of the Frogland community. Part of the presale whitelisting process was a request for a ‘criminal rap sheet’ for each member’s Notorious Frog. Out of the 1000+ early members, we selected the Top 10 Most Wanted based on their responses, as well as identifying and casting five investigators, three reporters, and a few other ‘wild card’ roles and launched an online social role playing game, open for all to participate.
This ongoing RPG started with a shocking murder that took place at the Dragonly Social Club in Frogland, and when the local police department failed to make a solid case a toad on the inside of the FBI leaked the rap sheets of the Top Ten most Notorious Frogs to a reporter. It is now down to the investigators, reporters, and community to identify the culprit before another murder takes place!
This game is a warm up to the storytelling elements that will be found in Frogland and throughout New Pangea. A community tested and text based narrative that will transition from a 2D metaverse on Discord into a 3D metaverse that is New Pangea.
With the storyline between developed our top storyteller frog who comes from decades of creativity at Disney and Lucas Arts, referred to as Bugs, and the Frogholder community, we are seeing what the co-creation of narrative inspires. Having many individuals with a shared vested interest in creating something spectacular is what drives this space further into the future and makes it so unique.
Collaboration
The NFT space moves at breakneck speed fueled by some of the most creative minds on the planet. Here, we are all working towards the common goal of building a better metaverse, a space built by the community and for the community. Who better knows what kind of utility consumers want than the consumers themselves? This is why we are undertaking a radical new approach, where every Notorious Frog Holder not only receives a plot of land in Frogland, the central most founding district of New Pangea, but also has a say in the development process.
One thing that scales with resource is complexity. The large corporations we will see flooding into the NFT and metaverse space will inevitably be slowed down by the amount of bureaucracy and red tape needed to progress any project forward. Approvals are required by those who may not live and breathe the space as much as those NFT artists and creative thinkers do. This is precisely what we are striving to avoid as those barriers limit creativity and hinder growth, and Frogland will not be bound to slow moving and slower minded bureaucrats. Every member of the Frogland community is committed to building a better environment for themselves and their communities.
We’ll be collaborating with other teams, communities, and individual artists large and small on a variety of important decisions. Decisions made on artistic design, community and zone aesthetic, narrative arcs, and direction of the project will be as just as crowd funded through ideas as the game development is through NFT sales. As New Pangea comes together we will be relying on you, dear citizen, to help shape this world.
It is important that New Pangea is a world built both by and for its inhabitants, but as you know this collaborative approach does mean that things aren’t always perfect. Our approach means that sometimes things are shared before they are runway ready, and we believe that it is important for that visibility and transparency in the process of creation. It’s also important to realize that things can change as the project moves forward. Please check out subsequent articles and discord to catch up on all the latest hoppening in New Pangea.
