Please describe your proposed solution.

We will develop and publish a custom island for Fortnite Creative 2.0.

Accessible by over 240 million active Fortnite players, Cardano Community Island will serve as a hub in the Epic Games metaverse.

What is Fortnite Creative?

Fortnite Creative is a sandbox game, developed and published by Epic Games, part of the video game Fortnite. Creative allows you to design Fortnite games and experiences that can be published and shared with online communities.

The perception surrounding the problem that we're trying to solve revolves around the massive opportunity presented by the release of Unreal Engine 5 and recently Unreal Editor for Fortnite. These freely available tools enable virtually anyone to contribute to the metaverse layer that Epic Games is building around its flagship product, Fortnite.

The reason for approaching the problem in this way is based on the objective of growing Cardano's community and awareness through this medium. As a result, bringing people to the community and enabling the ecosystem to get stronger.

The project will engage Fortnite's already existing audience and will provide an opportunity for Cardano's existing community to meet with those that want to learn about Cardano.

We will demonstrate or prove the project's impact by publishing the analytics of the Cardano Community Island on a monthly basis.

How does your proposed solution address the challenge and what benefits will this bring to the Cardano ecosystem?

The proposed solution addresses the challenge by exposing the Cardano ecosystem to a very large audience, thus driving more adoption and use cases through education, raising awareness and emphasizing on the various utilities that either Cardano has as a blockchain in itself, projects built on Cardano through Cardano Catalyst, Cardano's history, objectives of the Voltaire era and more.

This will lead to the onboarding of diverse dReps with different languages, national origins, occupations, genders, ages, religions.

Besides funding the project team, this project will impact the Cardano ecosystem by raising awareness and enabling community growth through a very large already existing metaverse layer and its community.

The value brought to the Cardano ecosystem will be measurable in the number of people exposed to what Cardano is and specifically Age of Voltaire!

According to activeplayer.io, Fortnite had more than 240 million active players between May and June 2023, and over 3 million players are playing the game right now.

At the time of writing this proposal, Fortnite live player statistics are as follows:

Online Players (1H): 1,555,063

Active Players (30D): 242,989,948

Twitch Stream Watched Hours (30D): 33,615,290

Peak Viewers (30D): 128,787

We will be actively engaging with the Fortnite community on all major social mediums, live streaming events from the Cardano Community Island on Twitch and YouTube and regularly publishing videos and updates about further developments and upcoming events in order to raise Cardano's awareness among the 240+ million monthly active users of the Fortnite metaverse layer.

Immediately after the project completes, we will be targeting to reach 0.0001% of the total audience from this metaverse layer (~24,000 monthly active users hosted as visitors on the Cardano Community Island instances).

Our long term objective is to reach 1% of the total audience from this metaverse layer, (~2,400,000 monthly active users hosted as visitors on Cardano Community Island instances).

How do you intend to measure the success of your project?

Measuring the success of the project will be possible by following analytics data associated with the published Fortnite custom map, as part of the publisher's Creator Portal, offered by Epic Games, as part of publisher tools.

As players go through different metavenues, activities and learning paths while progressing through a discovery of the Cardano Community Island, they will learn, keep up to date with the latest developments and get started with utilizing one's governance / voting power.

This vision is fully in line with the Voltaire era in Cardano's development roadmap and is important in order to attract many diverse dRep participations while making sure that stakeholders know how to participate and / or utilize voter delegation.

Please describe your plans to share the outputs and results of your project?

Metrics such as unique visitors to the Fortnite custom island developed for Cardano's Community as a meeting place in the Epic Games metaverse will be collected and made available publicly to the community on Medium, Telegram, Discord and other social mediums such as Twitter.

What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability?

Mihai Bărbulescu, 20+ years of experience in software life-cycle, cybersecurity and marketing, cybersecurity and marketing

Currently working as: freelance contractor

Linkedin: Mihai Bărbulescu

Working with Unreal Engine since version 4.2 (2019), currently Unreal Engine 5.2 (recently released) has enabled a wide range of skills required to successfully complete this project. As Unreal Editor for Fornite is still in beta, the future of this project offers opportunities in terms of integrating real world scanned objects through Reality Capture, AI driven NPCs through Inworld and life-like avatars animated using facial motion capture, thanks to Rokoko and Metahumans.

What are the main goals for the project and how will you validate if your approach is feasible?

Key Metrics to measure

• Number of unique monthly visitors on the Cardano Community Island

One of the main project goals is to get as many people as possible visiting the Cardano Community Island on Fornite's metaverse layer.

• Player retention on the Cardano Community Island

Whenever players return day-to-day and week-to-week indicate compelling gameplay, so consistent play and returning players contribute to this calculation.

Please provide a detailed breakdown of your project’s milestones and each of the main tasks or activities to reach the milestone plus the expected timeline for the delivery.

The following milestones will be implemented on a monthly basis:

—> Month 1

Greybox (blockout) level design for 4 venues that will be initially present on the community island. Greyboxing (also known as blockout) is the process of making a playable rough draft of a level to get a sense of its gameplay before polishing its look. It's common for level designers to greybox a game environment to test its layout for gameplay purposes.

This includes the following initial venues that will be part of this project (with more to come in later Catalyst funding rounds):

1. Cardano Museum (purpose: education, roadmap, generic community meeting place)
2. Cardano Conference venue (purpose: education, streaming of live speaker events)
3. Cardano Governance hall (purpose: education, current challenges, dRep onboarding, streaming of live speaker events)
4. Cardano Catalyst exhibition hall (purpose: education, current round challenges, timeline, completed projects showcase - ever growing space)

—> Month 2

Cardano Museum high quality texture design and implementation.

—> Month 3

Cardano Conference venue high quality texture design and implementation.

—> Month 4

Cardano Governance hall high quality texture design and implementation.

—> Month 5

Cardano Catalyst exhibition hall high quality texture design and implementation.

—> Month 6

Design of 5 different custom Fortnite island loading screens using Cardano's branding / media pack elements (logo, colors). The following custom loading screens will be designed and kept ready to be switched periodically, depending on which venue is being emphasized, based on current events that need to be promoted:

1. Generic Cardano community island loading screen design
2. Cardano Museum loading screen design
3. Cardano Conference venue loading screen design
4. Cardano Governance hall loading screen design
5. Cardano Catalyst exhibition hall loading screen design

Submission of the Cardano Community island project for Epic Games' moderator review (required step of the publishing process). By closely following the Fortnite Creative Community and Content Guidelines, we expect to receive a timely approval and publishing of the live island onto Fortnite's metaverse layer. In the unlikely event that the island will receive moderator comments and publishing will be postponed, we reserve the last weeks of this project's last month for this specific purpose.

Marketing promotion through various Cardano, generic gaming and Fortnite specific communities on Twitter, YouTube and Discord. We also aim to obtain further traction in tier A publications that frequently promote popular Fortnite islands.

Playtesting with Cardano community members, planning first events.

Please describe the deliverables, outputs and intended outcomes of each milestone.

The following deliverables will be reported on a monthly basis:

—> Month 1

Deliverables will consist of screenshots and video recordings of greybox (blockout) level designs done for the four venues that will initially be part of this project:

• Cardano Museum
• Cardano Conference hall
• Cardano Governance venue
• Cardano Catalyst exhibition hall

—> Month 2

Deliverables will consist of screenshots and video recordings of the resulting Cardano Museum.

—> Month 3

Deliverables will consist of screenshots and video recordings of the resulting Cardano Conference hall.

—> Month 4

Deliverables will consist of screenshots and video recordings of the resulting Cardano Governance venue.

—> Month 5

Deliverables will consist of screenshots and video recordings of the resulting Cardano Catalyst exhibition hall.

—> Month 6

Deliverables will consist of screenshots and video recordings of:

• 5 different custom Fortnite island loading screens using Cardano's branding / media pack elements (logo, colors)
• Moderator review and publishing report once submitted to Epic Games, depending on their review process timeline
• Marketing promotion reports resulted from outreach to influencers and media publications
• Videos resulted from live streams of Cardano community playtesting, documented plans for first 4 events, one for each specific venue

Please provide a detailed budget breakdown of the proposed work and resources.

The following deliverables will be reported on a monthly basis:

—> Month 1 (budget: 12000 ADA)

• Cardano Museum greybox (blockout) level design

• budget: 3000 ADA

• Cardano Conference venue greybox (blockout) level design

• budget: 3000 ADA

• Cardano Governance hall greybox (blockout) level design

• budget: 3000 ADA

• Cardano Catalyst exhibition hall greybox (blockout) level design

• budget: 3000 ADA

—> Month 2 (budget: 12000 ADA)

• Cardano Museum - venue high quality texture design and implementation
• budget: 12000 ADA

—> Month 3 (budget: 12000 ADA)

• Cardano Conference hall high quality texture design and implementation
• budget: 12000 ADA

—> Month 4 (budget: 12000 ADA)

• Cardano Governance hall high quality texture design and implementation
• budget: 12000 ADA

—> Month 5 (budget: 12000 ADA)

• Cardano Catalyst exhibition hall high quality texture design and implementation
• budget: 12000 ADA

—> Month 6 (budget: 12000 ADA)

• Generic Cardano community island loading screen design

• budget: 1000 ADA

• Cardano Museum loading screen design

• budget: 1000 ADA

• Cardano Conference venue loading screen design

• budget: 1000 ADA

• Cardano Governance hall loading screen design

• budget: 1000 ADA

• Cardano Catalyst exhibition hall loading screen design

• budget: 1000 ADA

• Submission of the Cardano Community island project for Epic Games' moderator review

• budget: 1000 ADA

• Marketing promotion

• budget: 4000 ADA

• Playtesting with Cardano community members, planning first events

• budget: 2000 ADA

Who is in the project team and what are their roles?

Mihai Bărbulescu, 20+ years of experience in software life-cycle, cybersecurity and marketing

Currently working as: freelance contractor

Linkedin: Mihai Bărbulescu

Roles in this project: general manager, lead game designer, marketing and community growth.

Working with Unreal Engine since version 4.2 (2019), currently Unreal Engine 5.2 (recently released) has enabled a wide range of featured skills required to successfully complete this project.

As Unreal Editor for Fortnite is still in beta, the future of this project offers opportunities in terms of integrating real world scanned objects through Reality Capture, AI driven NPCs through Inworld and life-like avatars animated using facial motion capture, thanks to Rokoko and Metahumans. These will be used to create in-game educational experiences.

How does the cost of the project represent value for money for the Cardano ecosystem?

The value brought to the Cardano ecosystem will be measurable in the number of people exposed to what Cardano is and specifically Age of Voltaire!

According to activeplayer.io, Fortnite had more than 240 million active players between May and June 2023, and over 3 million players are playing the game right now.

At the time of writing this proposal, Fortnite live player statistics are as follows:

Online Players (1H): 1,555,063

Active Players (30D): 242,989,948

Twitch Stream Watched Hours (30D): 33,615,290

Peak Viewers (30D): 128,787

We will be actively engaging with the Fortnite community on all major social mediums, live streaming events from the Cardano Community Island on Twitch and YouTube and regularly publishing videos and updates about further developments and upcoming events in order to raise Cardano's awareness among the 240+ million monthly active users of the Fortnite metaverse layer.

Exposing the Cardano ecosystem, governance, the need for dReps, getting to know more about existing dReps and the need for ADA holders to allocate their voting power to particular dReps will be highly cost effective if done in the way described by this solution.

Alternative marketing costs could be 100x - 1000x more when aiming to reach the same amount of people, even if we're to consider only a small fraction of Fortnite's metaverse layer total audience.