It is very nice to be able to attend an event at this moment, even better a borderless, permissionless gathering. An event about crypto, blockchain, games, and other fun stuff.
Welcome to Dygycon. Where many people in the crypto world, mostly NFT, get together. They were people like John and Richie from Ultrarare, Crypto Stache, Chris Roberts, and Carrie from Splinterlands, and others I can’t recall exactly. About 450 people attended this event. And talking about Splinterlands, they started this cool event and will try to hold Dygycon every 2 months or so. So you will have a chance to attend eventually if you want to.
The Setup
The event looked like a small virtual one. Exactly what one expects from something for such a gathering. Quite barren and geared toward compatibility, speed, and usability. It reminded me of old games with instances like the first one to use it, Guild Wars. There were many rooms with different booths in each. There was no apparent connection or theme between them.
Brave Room
Founders Fund (The Sandbox)
Gala Games Room
Market Square Room
Blockchain Cards
Splinterlands Wiki
Superworld Room
Welcome Room
The welcome room, as its name says, is where you start when you entered the event. It was also used for the general messages from the organizers of the event. There were only 3 booths in there and a counter to change your avatar appearance. This is also the place you could find the gates to the other rooms. However, the teleport option ended up being better as the instance number and number of people were shown.
Event Swag Booth
To get the attendance swag there was an icon to click to open a browser and fill a Google form. It contained some simple questions, along with your WAX and ETH addresses. I haven’t received anything 24 hrs after but let see as the event was on Saturday, a weekend day. I might post about it at a later date, we will see.
Beat A Pro
This was nice. It was the chance to make a single Splinterlands match in the Bronze league against a pro. If we could beat that pro, he would take our user name and we could receive a Splinterlands NFT. Except me and the other people at the booth couldn’t figure out who was the pro. And when some of us finally find out. It seems like he disconnected. Maybe he just went to another instance, who knows. Concerning the instances, you can read more about the instances down in this article.
Splinterlands Booth
The Splinterlands booth had nothing special other than giving information about the game with links and a nice video ad. This is maybe because I am already a player. But I think that most people there also were.
The Patio Room
This was a place to socialize while roasting marshmallows around a campfire. There was also a pond to fish but no booth. It was just as easy as one-click to throw the line. And then one click at the button that would appear for half a second n the middle of the screen. We would then see a fish over our avatar head of different sizes.
The auction room and the auditorium
These were big rooms with a screen just like a theater. This is where some of the presentations took place. One funny thing is that anyone attending could change the slices that were shown on the screen. So it to be said as a reminder from the organizers to the audience. This was kind of funny.
The action or what to do
The auction
The auction was really a turn-off. There we quite nice items put up on auction. Some #1 mints, some special edition of the Chalok Minotaur from Ultra Horrors, a Splinterland original map drawing, and other very rare pieces. But sadly the auction took place with only 35 people and possible bidders present. This is the limit of people allowed in an instance of the auction room. At one point there were 3 auction rooms but only one with auctioneers. This caused some troubles and uproar among the attendees.
The rewards and freebies
The stars scattered around
Around the show, there were some stars that could be picked up but no instructions were given on what they were. I tried to look if they could be redeemed but I didnt find anything. I think there were many people asking this question. The event ended before I could figure it out so I might never know the answer.
Fishing at the pond
There was also some sort of fishing game but then again. There was nothing clear about it except that it was said some of the fish were huge and special. No other information was provided and there was no place to redeem or whatsoever.
The unknown quest
There was also some conference quest or so but not much information could be found. It was finally on a post in Publish0x with not-so-clear information. Apparently, the ones who got some map NFT on WAX knew exactly what to do. But for most, it just came as a confusing surprise.
Free NFT at Anyobserver booth
The NFT of Anyobserver on WAX was limited to 128 copies. This means that about 80% of people didnt get any. The contract would not allow more to be minted. I was some of the first ones in but by the time I realized it was there, it was too late already. Too bad. I will know for next time.
The platform of the event
The platform used for the event is Gamerjibe. It is made just for that, hosting virtual events. It is run in a browser, it is very simple and easy to use. It is very good at what it needs to do, communicate. Chats, camera, microphone it does support all of it. There isn’t much customization but that is ok. I guess I am too used to seeing people run around in all kinds of outfits from m years of online gaming.
Something I thought was very annoying is the color of people’s name tags. They were white with no shadow or outline that did not contrast with the walls of the rooms of the event. There was no option to change it.
The platform is also growing so I guess that Gamerjibe will work closely with the team at Splinterlands to sort out all the problems that arise at this event.
The big problems
Of the event, one big problem arises. A limited number of attendees in each room as there was a 35 people limit. And this leads to an auction where only 35 people out of the 300-400 or so could attend and bid. This was very limiting and got many people angry.
Another problem comes from the same limitation. As they were announcing that speakers would make presentations at their booth. The instances got full and again only a bunch of people could attend. So out of the few things I wanted to see and hear I only had the chance to be in the right room for one of them.
One way to counter the last problem was to broadcast a live stream of what was happening but again. This functionality seemed broken as it would not play the stream if we were not in the same instance. At least this is what I understood of it as the stream never worked.
In the end and the next event
In the end, it was a very nice experience that I can’t wait to repeat. I have not been to an expo for a long time with that stupid covid-19. I had the chance to chat a bit with Richie from Ultra Rare and to hear about a virtual world game akin to UplandMe.The next event is not planned yet. But the growing success point to bigger and bigger events. Thanks to the Splinterlands team for making this idea possible.
Let me know if you will attend the next Dygycon! It might also be nice to see BCH there when the SLP tokens get more traction...
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