Ventures

Venture Basics

When a user puts up an award for accomplishing a specific, difficult gaming task, they launch a Venture. A Venture encompasses all of the goal, rules, games, and other information necessary to complete the challenge. Ventures get added to our Venture Board for public perusal, where other users can add additional funds to the award pool. When a skilled gamer accomplishes the Venture's feat, it goes through a public verification process, and the award pool is paid out if their claim is valid. Some types of ventures, such as Bounties , have more drawn out verification processes; check out the Venture sections for more information!

Ventures have a handful of states that represent their current phase of completion. These states are summarized below.

• Draft: The first stage of Venture development. Ventures in Draft state are only visible to the users that created them in the Dashboard, and can be revised until they're ready to be submitted to moderators for approval.
• Staging: any Ventures that have been approved by moderators, but are not yet listed on the Venture Board are considered to be in Staging. They will be posted to the Venture Board during the following day, and until then are only visible to the user that created the Venture via the Dashboard.
• Live: Ventures that have been posted to the Venture Board but haven't yet received any Claims are considered to be Live. Anybody can contribute to these Ventures, and players can make Claims on them.
• Chase: A special state reserved for Bounties, the Chase state means that a valid Claim has been received for the Venture but it is still accepting Claims that improve on the goal.
• Review: Ventures in Review state are available for the public to verify that the Claim accomplished the feat, followed all the rules, and contains no mischief.
• Archive: Any Venture that received a winning Claim, was verified, and fully paid out is set to Archive. These Ventures are still listed on the Venture Board for historical discovery, but don't accept new Contributions.

Types of Ventures

Users can elect to provide awards toward several different types of Ventures, each with their own unique focus and processes.

• Bounties : A Bounty is a competitive goal oriented toward optimizing gameplay, such as in a speedrun or high score run. Bounties are special in that they use a Chase model for their verification. The Chase process allows players to compete for the award even after the Venture's initial goal is met, resulting in a more optimized final result.
• Hunts : Sometimes players can envision fantastic opportunities that are just out of reach, or a particular milestone has eluded players for years. Hunts allow users to provide awards for uncovering new tricks and glitches toward a specific goal, or as an incentive to crack through a major milestone. Unlike Bounties, Hunts award the first valid claim, and do not go through the special Chase process.
• Digs : Knowledge is often key to improvement, but games may keep their internal formulas and data hidden away. Digs incentivize skilled digital spelunkers to uncover specific aspects of a game's design - maybe a damage formula, or enemy characteristics - and document it publicly. Unlike Bounties and Hunts, Dig contributors receive pitches from individuals and select just one to perform the work.
• Crafts : Having the right tools can be vital to testing and practicing a game. Such tools include hitbox viewers, practice mods, and support scripts. Crafts are all about building or improving those tools. Similar to Digs, Crafts also set up contracts with just one individual to perform the work, however the end result will be available to the public.

Venture Creation Guidelines

Ventures must meet certain standards to allow for fairness and proper verification. When creating a Venture, please keep the following guidelines in mind.

• All rules and durations must be objective. This means that each rule, setting, and even the duration of a Claim can be verified by other users, even those that may not be intimately familiar with the game.
• Be as detailed as possible. More specific information on the rules, settings, versions, timing, and so on will help to focus future Claims and make sure that your Venture can't be claimed on an unforeseen technicality.
• Ventures cannot be based predominantly on luck or random chance. Player skill must be the major factor in the end performance; luck can play a part, but cannot be the primary source of score or time variation.
• For time-oriented Ventures, select consistent, easy-to-identify timer start and timer stop points. These frames do not necessarily have to match community timing convention, but are necessary for fair and consistent comparison.
• Score-oriented Ventures do not need to strictly be for a game's concept of score. "Score" can be any collectible resource, so long as its collection amount can be optimized in some definable way.
• Every Venture must be open to everybody. Do not include restrictions against individuals or groups. For example, rules cannot prevent users from competing based on current placement on community leaderboards.
• Don't promote arbitrary rules and restrictions. "Arbitrary" in this case just means any rules that don't provide a meaningful gameplay or challenge enhancement.
• Don't use any rules that cannot be easily verified or cannot be applied evenly.
• Don't promote breaking any laws. This includes encouraging players to find and download illegal game copies in order to compete.
• Don't promote any rules that would require breaking or modifying hardware in order to compete.

Venture Timelines

Creating a new Venture can be a bit of a rush! However, there are a few steps to the process that help to ensure Ventures are well-specified and can be accurately judged.

1. Create the Venture draft! Take as much time as you need to nail down the specifications. When you think it's ready, submit your initial Contribution, and a moderator will review the details of the Venture, likely within 24 hours.
2. After you and the moderator iron out all the details and agree on the specifications, that Venture will be accepted for posting and consider as "Staged."
3. Each day at 11:59 PM Pacific Standard Time, all Ventures that have been Staged are finalized and added to the Venture Board as "Live" Ventures. From then on, other users can freely view, Contribute to, or Claim the Venture as appropriate.

This all means that the time from creation to listing is variable, but can complete within a day if a Venture is already well-specified. Claims will also typically be reviewed within 24 hours from submission, but exact timing may vary.

Several other features and functions rely on the 11:59 PM Pacific Standard Time processing, including Contribution Continue timing and Chase countdowns. This fixed processing time was chosen to keep major Venture and Contribution updates consistent and mitigate confusion about when the deadline for activities is, such as submitting a Claim or changing Continue settings.