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Merit Circle & Dept Agency to collaborate on industry-leading gaming platform

In a novel industry like play-to-earn, gamers face many challenges; unreliable infrastructures, indigestible content and over-complex workflows, to name a few. To solve these problems and improve the lives of not only our scholars but gamers in general, we are very excited to announce that we're collaborating with Dept Agency to build a revolutionary gaming platform that will meet the many needs of gamers.

Improving the lives of gamers

Gaming runs through the veins of the Merit Circle DAO. We invest in games, we play games, we allow others to play games and we are more than excited to start building games too. Currently, we work with thousands of gamers on a daily basis playing Axie Infinity, Vulcan Verse and, soon, many other games. Although operations are going well and we're constantly scaling, there's still plenty of work to be done.

The current operations are very labor-intensive and require a delicate approach to ensure every single gamer feels comfortable, welcome and heard. The community we have is large in comparison to others, but still a tiny fraction of what we know it will become. To prevent any friction from occurring as we hit certain milestones, we can't delay focusing on improving the current workflows of our gamers.

More importantly we are aware of the current challenges in our daily operations, and we embrace the fact that we can truly make our gamers' lives better. We want to automate and smoothen the current onboarding process, create a clear financial overview with a payout function integrating multiple wallets, open and transparent in-game performance tracking and thereby pin-pointing where to improve.

As we scale towards more games, we want our scholars to have the ability to switch between games seamlessly. Top-performing players in one game should have the opportunity to experiment in new games, and underperforming players in one game might excel in others. To bring it all together, we will have leaderboards to stimulate competition among our beloved scholars. We are looking to gamify the entire process, into an even more exciting gaming experience!

Raising the bar

With the play-to-earn model being embraced by a larger audience, we can see a shift in job opportunities, especially in low-wage countries. People who first struggled to make a living are now thriving in an online community where their skills are rewarded better than ever before. This changes not only the way they make money but their entire lives.

We wish to improve the earning potential of our gamers as well as their lives in general. We want to emphasize education and teach all about the different facets of life other than simply working on their gaming skills. We want to help answer questions such as "how do you handle a sudden shift in your financial position?", "how could you use DeFi products to make money work for you, to earn additional money?", and so on.

We want to truly raise the industry standard and, it's with this mind that we are building an overarching platform to cover everything a gamer could possibly need or want to know.

Potential overview of the Merit Circle gaming platform

Internal or external

After initially agreeing on a scope for the platform, we felt that there were two paths we could take. The first was the creation of the platform in-house and the second was working together with an external party. While both have their pros and cons, in the end, the decision was an easy one.

In-house would mean we would have to start from scratch and form a team of experienced developers, designers, product owners and everything in between. It would likely take more than a year to pull this team together, map out a concrete plan, find synergy working together and structure workflows. This would prolong the period before we could actually start building the platform in question.

In contrast, working with an external party while onboarding an internal product owner will offer greater flexibility and speed up the project. Once we collaboratively map out a plan, structure and timeline, it's straight onto the build, all the while maintaining focus on our daily operations. We were convinced that this was the right route for us after initial talks with a few notable agencies.

Dept Agency

Skills, experience and talent, that's what we were looking for in a partner who could realize our vision. After having some initial chats with other potential agencies, we came across Dept Agency, a full service digital agency home to more than 1,500 thinkers and makers throughout Europe and the United States.

Having worked with brands like Adidas, Algorand, Otrium and many others, the experience and skills are definitely there. Since the very first conversation we had with Dept Agency, we felt understood, heard and, most importantly, they immediately started expanding on our thoughts.

When we learned that they had recently built an open-source NFT marketplace, everything clicked into place. Dept Agency had an internal brainstorming session and came up with a clear overview of their vision on our project. We are now certain that Merit Circle and Dept Agency make the perfect pair.

"We're very happy with this new strategic partnership with Merit Circle, in which we further explore the blockchain tech domain. It's a great opportunity for us to combine our strategic, creative and technological expertise. We're very excited to build the gaming community platform with Merit Circle and thereby bring together capital, knowledge, and gamers." — Sarah Wubben, Managing Director Dept NL

Time to build

This first phase of our collaboration with Dept Agency will consist of mapping out the exact details of the platform. We have to decide what will be in the first version of the platform and what, ideally, it would look like. Thereafter, we can decide what to build, when.

In the coming months we will be working closely together with Dept Agency to release the first version of the platform in Q1 of 2022. This version will house some basic data, have an onboarding flow and some other initial features. As the year progresses, we will continuously update the platform to the point it houses all the information needed to make it a happy place for any gamer.

Eventually, as we have finalized developing our platform and it's functioning the way we envisioned, Dept Agency will guide Merit Circle in forming a dedicated team to sustain the platform, and improve as the industry evolves.

DAO proposal

Naturally, the above is only possible thanks to the support of our MC token holders. Therefore, we have spoken with some core contributors to the DAO and asked them to draft a proposal that will go on through the official governance process. We are excited to hear from our community members and receive some valuable feedback that will improve the overall product.

After the voting process concludes and the proposal and thereby the budget is approved, we will officially give the green light and start building. We are extremely grateful and excited to have the opportunity to provide such an opportunity to our current and future scholars while raising the industry standard along the way!

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Source: https://medium.com/@meritcircle/merit-circle-dept-agency-to-collaborate-on-industry-leading-gaming-platform-7dab9f1bfc6?source=topics_v2---------4-84--------------------ac4d164f_dec8_4ce4_b2f3_389e4858394d-------19---

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