$225raised
$375valuation
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Project summary

Run fun and engaging tournaments for the Manifold community.

Games are a great way to bring a community together and make them want to stick around and engage with each other. Games can also be intellectually challenging, rewarding cleverness and technical analysis, and teaching people useful mathematical concepts, all of which are a perfect fit for Manifold's core demographic. Gaming tournaments are also a natural fit for prediction markets, as people can bet on the outcomes of the tournament, gaining information by studying the game, watching the tournament, or playing themselves.

In fact, most traditional gambling occurs with regards to games; casino games being the most well known, but people also bet on football and many others. Getting Manifold into the gaming scene seems like a promising avenue for both user acquisition (people joining to bet on an existing game they're interested in) and retention (people having fun on Manifold playing games with each other).

What are this project's goals and how will you achieve them?

Goal: Run fun and engaging tournaments for the Manifold community.

Method: By running fun and engaging tournaments for the Manifold community.

How will this funding be used?

I don't have a traditional day job, my income comes from various forms of gig work and self-employment. Any money I get from this project is time that I don't have to spend making that money some other way, and is therefore additional time I can put into Manifold.

Who is on your team and what's your track record on similar projects?

Only me as the core team member, though I plan to solicit help from others if it becomes necessary for a particularly complicated tournament. I previously ran a Magic: The Gathering tournament and a prisoner's dilemma/code golf programming and game theory competition on Manifold, both of which were well-received.

Outside of Manifold, running gaming tournaments is the closest thing I have to a day job. I've been judging high level tabletop Magic tournaments for more than 10 years, have designed software for them, and write about best practices on my blog.

I currently have two more tournaments planned; a sequel to the prisoner's dilemma tournament, improving the tournament structure and fixing some flaws of the last one, and a weekly Among Us league. Depending on how those go I'll figure out what direction makes the most sense to pursue next.

What are the most likely causes and outcomes if this project fails? (premortem)

  • Insufficient interest from the community. The Magic tournament had 16 people, and the prisoner's dilemma contest had about 30, which were plenty to run a fun event, but not highly promising numbers given the overall size of Manifold's user base. The Among Us league only has 4 signups thus far, which is not a big problem in this case (Among Us runs best with games of 5-10 people), but indicates relatively low interest from the community.

  • Becoming overburdened with logistical work. The Magic tournament and the prisoner's dilemma tournament together took about 15 hours of work on my end to run. Some of that was startup costs; now that I've written the Javascript framework for the prisoner's dilemma I'll only need to make small modifications to it for future bot competitions. And Among Us doesn't require any tournament software, so I can run it with just a spreadsheet. But there's still a lot of effort that goes into all the organization, and if I run too much in a short time frame I might burn out and want to take a break from Manifold tournaments. (Though I'm pretty sure I'd eventually want come back to them. I only run tournaments for games that I myself find enjoyable, and I usually compete as a player in addition to organizing.)

What other funding are you or your project getting?

None. If this becomes a particularly involved endeavor with a large (50+ people) player base I may start taking a cut of entry fees, but I have no plans to do so any time soon. All tournaments I've run thus far have been for free.

FoldyOfficial avatar

Manifold Markets

10 months ago

January 15th Evaluation Results

Valuations: 0, 0, 0, 0, 200, 10, 0 Weighted Median Valuation: 0

Eliza: No progress, still seems cool.

cc6: Nothing has happened yet

wasabipesto: I think there could be interesting ideas here, but none of it caught on enough to be valuable. "Ways to win mana" like this should be featured more prominently on Manifold's home feed.

Rachel: No progress.

SG: Valuation mostly for first PDT.

James: Hasn't gotten too far. I guess the hardest part is organizing the people who want the tournament, not necessarily the technical part.

Austin: I think tournaments are pretty tricky, especially if “promotion” is a big part of what makes them successful. I would still love to have this work out, but maybe the best audience wouldn’t be “Manifold power users” but rather “existing community of gamers (eg MTG or Slay the Spire or Poker or sth) competing in a tournament that Manifold sponsors and run prediction markets on”. I recognize this is somewhat different than what Isaac set out to do though.

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Isaac-King avatar

Isaac King

11 months ago

This hasn't gone anywhere. I started the PD2 tournament, but it only has only one entry so far. And I asked SirSalty to advertise the Among Us tournament, but IDK if that happened, and we still only have 5 signups, which is not enough to make it a consistent thing.

I'm still hopeful about Among Us; I think it's a great fit for Manifold and could be a lot of fun if we get a consistent crowd. Maybe I'll try reaching out to some non-Manifolders who play Among Us and seeing if any of them would be interested in joining.

Other than that, I'm not really sure where else to go with this. Seems there just isn't that much demand for tournaments. Open to ideas.

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Isaac-King avatar

Isaac King

11 months ago

The next prisoner's dilemma tournament has begun!

https://manifold.markets/IsaacKing/who-will-win-the-second-installment

FoldyOfficial avatar

Manifold Markets

11 months ago

December 15th Evaluation Results

Valuations: 400, 0, 100, 0, 0

Median Valuation: 0

SG: Valuation just for first iteration of the prisoner's dilemma tournament.

Rachel: Looks like nothing has shipped yet, reasonable idea though.

Inga Wei: I think we've done similar things with varying degrees of success.

Ian Philips: Looks like Isaac hasn't made much progress yet, but I know community members appreciate these games! Would give it a few dozen $ valuation if y'all had some fun with the community, but ideally the fun itself is enough of a payoff.

Austin: I have fond memories of both the MtG tournament and the prisoner’s dilemma code golf challenge! I think the community got a fair bit of value for just having regular events that encouraged people to hang out and play together, and I’m looking forward to what Isaac cooks up.

Both MtG and prisoner’s dilemma require a fair amount of specialized domain knowledge, though. I think the most ambitious, most valuable goal would be some kind of Manifold tournament that draws outside excitement and participation — maybe something like a “new user create a prediction market on your personal life” tournament? idk.

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Isaac-King avatar

Isaac King

12 months ago

Project update: I plan to get the Prisoner's Dilemma tournament v2 started after this weekend. I haven't done anything with Among Us, as there weren't enough signups to get a consistent weekly game. After prisoner's dilemma I've been thinking of trying some other economics/game theory bot competitions, like bots that play the 2/3s game against each other. I'm open to other ideas; if there's any game or competition you'd like to play, please let me know!

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BoltonBailey avatar

Bolton Bailey

12 months ago

Of the various Manifold Community Fund projects, I thought this one was the best for its valuation. Isaac has a good track record of creating cool things for manifold in the form of Manifold Search. The iterated prisoners dilemma tournament seemed pretty successful, and like it could be a good draw for new users to the site.

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jskf avatar

Joris Kerkhoff

12 months ago

If you can do tournaments well, I could see it being quite beneficial to user retention/engagement. I think this is currently underrated compared to your search tool, which will mainly be used by users who are already.. retained and engaged.