110 HBD for 1 Month of Claude
I am requesting 110 HBD to fund one month of Claude to accelerate development of Dungeon Cities and more importantly, work on improving how new players are introduced to Hive.
This is deliberately a one-month proposal.
I don't want to ask the DHF to fund an AI subscription indefinitely. Give me one month, let me show what I accomplish with it and then the community can decide whether the results justify another proposal.
Why Claude and why not apply to an existing proposal?
I have already been using various free AI agents and models. No doubt they are useful, but Dungeon Cities has reached a point where the amount of development, balancing, research, content creation and planning required is becoming difficult to handle efficiently with the limitations of free models.
A better AI model would allow me to spend more time actually building the game rather than spending hours breaking down problems into smaller pieces that free models can handle.
Though there is already a funded Claude Subscription proposal on Hive but unfortunately, I cannot participate in that arrangement because Dungeon Cities' codebase is private and I am not comfortable making the repository public or giving access to private code.
I think there is another opportunity here. Instead of one person acting as the middleman for AI subscriptions, individual Hive projects that need AI assistance could make small, transparent proposals directly to the Hive community.
That could potentially:
- Reduce middleman costs
- Make funding more transparent
- Allow the community to choose which projects deserve support rather than 1 individual
- Give smaller projects access to tools they otherwise couldn't afford
- Create measurable accountability
I'm not suggesting every project should automatically receive funding. I'm suggesting that projects should ask the community directly and then prove that the investment was worthwhile.
What will the subscription be used for?
The Claude subscription will be used for development, content and research.
Game Development
- Adding new in-game content
- Creating new levels and progression
- Expanding the Dungeon Cities world and story
- Designing new gameplay mechanics
- Improving existing systems
- Writing and reviewing code
- Debugging and refactoring
- Creating tools that make future development faster
Game Balance
Dungeon Cities has a fairly complex progression and combat system. AI will help me analyse and iterate on:
- Monster statistics
- Player statistics
- Gear statistics
- Skills
- Combat interactions
- Progression curves
- Resource economies
- Difficulty scaling
- Rewards
- Character builds
The objective is not to blindly let Claude decide the numbers. It will be used as an additional analytical tool to help identify inconsistencies, simulate scenarios and speed up the balancing process.
Story & Content
Dungeon Cities needs more content if we want players to stay engaged. I want to use Claude to help:
- Expand the game's story
- Create lore
- Develop quests
- Create NPCs and characters
- Design new areas
- Generate ideas for events
7 .Develop additional progression systems
The final implementation and direction will still be decided by the team.
Marketing
Claude can also help us operate more consistently on the marketing side. The subscription can help:
- Create social media content
- Plan marketing campaigns
- Write posts and announcements
- Repurpose game updates into different formats
- Research potential Web2 audiences
- Improve our communication with existing Hive players
- Develop a strategy for bringing new players into Dungeon Cities
Hive onboarding
This is one of the main areas I want Claude's help on and therefore let me cover it separately below.
The bigger problem: Getting people onto Hive
One of the biggest barriers I see when trying to introduce new players to Dungeon Cities is Hive account creation.
A player might discover the game, become interested and then be asked to go through several different steps and services just to get a Hive account. For someone who has never heard of Hive, that friction can be enough to make them stop.
And that's a problem. A huge one. It became quite evident when a few of my friends couldn't create Hive accounts through free services that were available. We want to target players in India but not before this onboarding issue is dealt with.
If our goal is to bring Web2 users into Hive, we need to make the first experience as simple as possible. And to do that I want to build an in-game account creation facility where these players can redeem their account creation code (that I plan to provide them personally) and create their Hive account without having to leave the game and navigate through multiple unrelated channels.
The experience should be closer to:
Discover Dungeon Cities -> Get an onboarding code -> Enter it in the game -> Create Hive account -> Start playing
rather than:
Discover Dungeon Cities -> Leave the game -> Find a Hive signup service -> Figure out account creation -> Come back -> Figure out how Hive works -> Try to get back into the game
That difference matters. The first experience keeps the player engaged with the game while introducing them to Hive. While the second risks losing them before they even get started. And since I will be giving out account creation codes personally, there is little to no chance of abusers getting in.
I want Dungeon Cities to become an easier entry point into the Hive ecosystem for people who have never used Hive before.
Why should Hive fund this and what does Hive get?
Hopefully Hive gets more than just another game. The immediate objective is to make Dungeon Cities better. But the larger objective is to build a game that can contribute to the Hive ecosystem in three ways:
1. More Hive users
Easier Hive onboarding -> more people exposed to the Hive ecosystem.
I don't want players to have to understand Hive before they can enjoy Dungeon Cities. I want them to discover Hive through the game. I have already worked out Campaign Mode in the game that's going to help with this.
2. More utility and demand for HIVE
Dungeon Cities already has an in-game economy built around Hive assets. As the game grows, we will introduce more mechanics where players can benefit from acquiring and using HIVE within the ecosystem.
Players should have reasons to acquire and use HIVE to access certain in-game benefits, participate in the economy and interact with the wider Dungeon Cities ecosystem.
That means a successful Dungeon Cities Game can create organic demand for HIVE as the player base grows. The more players we bring into the game, the more potential there is for HIVE to become something they actually use rather than simply a token they hear about.
I don't want to promise a specific amount of HIVE demand because that depends on how successful the game becomes. What I can promise is that creating real utility for HIVE is part of the direction of Dungeon Cities.
3. A gateway from Web2 to Hive
I am particularly interested in doing this in India, where there is a large gaming audience but relatively little awareness of Hive. If I personally introduce a player to Dungeon Cities, I should be able to give that player a straightforward path to becoming a Hive user. That's the experiment I want to work on.
If the onboarding process works, the same approach could potentially be useful for other Hive projects trying to bring in new users.
A better game -> more players-> more Hive users -> more HIVE utility -> potential demand for HIVE.
Why only 110 HBD?
As mentioned earlier, I don't want to ask the community to fund an open-ended subscription. 110 HBD is enough for us to test whether the additional AI capability actually makes a meaningful difference.
After the month, I will come back and show:
- What was developed
- What new content was created
- What systems were improved
- What balancing work was completed
- What marketing/content was produced
- What measurable progress Dungeon Cities made
If the community believes the investment produced meaningful results, I can submit another proposal. If it didn't, then don't fund another month. This creates a simple feedback loop between the project and the Hive community.
Small Funding -> Build-> Show results -> Vote again.
And I would encourage other Hive projects that cannot participate in the existing Claude subscription arrangement to consider doing something similar. Let the Hive community decide which projects deserve the resources.
VOTE THROUGH PEAKD
VOTE THROUGH ECENCY