Since launching in 2018, the team at Splinterlands has learned a lot about attracting new players into this ecosystem. Much of that was through trial and error, and some of it comes from being steady even when the crypto ecosystem or the world at large goes berserk. Today we’re happy to present our first draft of a Splinterlands Sales Policy. This policy is meant to impact and inform all the future sales that we do.
One thing that has been missing for much of this time is an established sales rhythm for bulk deals that is both publicly visible/accessible and attractive to new and existing players alike. On the outside we sometimes seem erratic in regards to how we manage our sales, and we're implementing this policy as a starting point to build a consistent approach the community can come to expect. We are now changing that by implementing some policies that will allow us to better attract capital, new players, and new communities, which will all benefit our existing community. We’re doing this with the intent to notify all users of how we plan to operate sales and put everyone on the same footing. With this policy you have ways to anticipate how we'll operate throughout the year in regards to managing sales the company will put into effect.
Here's some of the philosophy behind what we're doing.
While Splinterlands is first and foremost a fun game to play at all levels, the economic aspect of the game is designed to incentivize players to play at higher league levels and own as much of the assets as they can. The only way to get to higher league levels is to put capital into the economy and win games, whether that is through purchasing and leveling up cards, or renting them.
Over ⅓ of the world’s population plays video games, but many of them don’t have the resources to purchase a lot of assets up front in a game like Splinterlands. This is why access to bulk deals as an individual or as a group becomes important. Card rentals are much more affordable for a lot of players, and with the advent of partner platforms allowing card owners to list individual cards and/or entire competitive decks of cards with no upfront cost to gamers, everybody can win. Gamers now have access to more competitive decks, and a clear path to collect cards and other assets. Card owners can also earn additional cards for their collection(s).
Providing incentives to purchase in bulk is essential to attracting new guilds, new communities, and other new organizations to participate in the ecosystem.
Entertainment value is essential to all players in the game, with new communities and organizations entering the ecosystem being no exception. But in order to attract other communities and organizations to become big participants in our ecosystem, they also look for 1) visibility of their brand/art/community, and 2) utility for their NFT’s and tokens, amongst other things. We believe we can provide at least #1, and possibly (at least in some cases), #2.
We are at the very beginning of implementing new and innovative ideas for giving other communities more visibility and branding opportunities in Splinterlands, and potentially future games as well. While the details of these ideas are still being developed, the main point of emphasis is that we view this as very important for growing our community further.
An example of how we can brand external communities into splinterlands is thinking through our guild & tournament systems. We can see different companies and brands having custom skins and decals that can be applied to NFTs to give them a unique flavor that associates Splinterlands assets with external brands. We can see this especially with Esports. Imagine a guild that’s all displaying custom logos in all their matches.
Ultimately the sales program has two main goals. We want to bring money into the ecosystem and bring people into the ecosystem. We'll offer volume discounts available to anyone in the community that can either personally, through a business, or through a pool reach certain payment threshholds with additional benefits to their purchase. Separately, we may offer groups that can bring new players into the ecosystem a separate set of benefits. The best deals in the entire ecosystem will be to players who are able to bring in capital and additional players.
Here's how this philosophy turns into sales policy.
Cost and timing are typically among the greatest considerations for individuals and communities when deciding to upgrade their collection of assets or enter the Splinterlands ecosystem. We strive to give up to a 20% discount for purchasing larger quantities ($10,000) on select Shop items with the use of vouchers, but additional incentives can be had at even larger quantities and under specific conditions with special bulk deals.
Going forward, we plan to establish a more predictable rhythm for when special deals will be offered. There are a series of conditions under which you can expect special deal offerings.
Also, we reserve the right to hold back up to 10% of the assets available in any product offerings, for promotional purposes. This can include giveaways for special events, AMA’s, special deals, etc. Promotional purposes will be designed to attract new community members (especially whales and guilds) into the ecosystem.
New product releases have typically generated a lot of hype within our community. We intend to amplify this hype with special incentives, particularly incentives that help other communities and new gamers join the ecosystem as well as serving our existing community.
While we don’t have an established rhythm for when Splinterfest might do encores, you can bet that whenever it does, there will be special promotional deals associated with it similar to the original Splinterfest.
With the end of the year comes a series of holidays and celebratory events. We plan to celebrate the season each year with a collection of special bulk purchase deals.
We always want to bring our friends from web2 into web3, but many of us are already transacting and holding crypto. Given Splinterlands assets are web3 native, holding price points constant in spite of market conditions may not always make sense. When times get rough, we can modify incentives for bulk purchasing by lowering entry requirements to get high roller benefits.
The majority of the current community is already in favor of burning unsold Chaos Legion packs as sales of the edition enter fatigue rounds. This can also provide an incentive to the company to help find good deals to welcome new players into the ecosystem. Future designs will attempt to reduce the existence of fatigue rounds, but during those time we may offer extra good deals to clear out inventory.
There certainly could be new ideas introduced in the future, but we already know a handful of incentive categories you should expect to see.
Vouchers will remain a staple, a requirement for many bulk purchase promotions. But at very large purchase levels, and for certain promotions, we reserve the right to waive the need for vouchers to access certain deals. In some cases it will be difficult to access large quantities of vouchers, especially for new entrants to the ecosystem.
Each of the potential incentives above holds monetary value. While purchasing in the shop can provide up to a 20% bonus, special bulk purchase deals will aim to include a mix of additional incentives beyond the 20% bonus offered in the shop. Under some conditions (i.e. Splinterfest happens mid-year during a bull run), the additional incentives might be a bit smaller. Under other conditions (i.e. bear market + stale edition + end of year) might be quite substantial. We may include additional promotional items, branding potentials, potions, bonus packs, and other things we sell or own to make deals attractive to bulk buyers.
All of our special bulk purchase incentives are meant to do 2 things specifically - 1) bring more capital into the ecosystem, and 2) bring new players into the ecosystem. Our intention in publishing this post is to be fully transparent on what rhythm everyone can expect from Splinterlands in terms of special bulk deals, and also provide better definition on what we plan to offer and under what circumstances.
One thing to note- we don't do sweetheart deals. These deals are not ever meant to be private sales where special friends get special bonuses. The whole point of publishing the policy is to ensure that we're clear with how we conduct our business, how we provide bulk discounts to anyone in the community that meets the requirement, and how we're facilitating players forming groups to access discounts they couldn't otherwise get personally.
With our policy out in the public we'll be rolling out an end of year sale for Chaos Legion, Tower Defense, and Goals. Please look out for additional posts to come out soon that share some details.
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