Upland
Q3 Roadmap Update & AMA

July 24, 2023

Q3 Roadmap Update & AMA

It's time for our quarterly roadmap update! In this update, we'll quickly highlight all the new features that Genesis Week brought during Q2 and provide an overview of what's in store for Q3.

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We would like to also announce Upland’s Co-CEO Idan Zuckerman and Chief of Staff Danny Brown Wolf will be hosting a Community Town Hall on Tuesday, July 25th, at 11 AM PT, at the San Francisco Upland Cafe (722 MONTGOMERY STREET, SF). Make sure to arrive early because, after the show, Idan and Danny will answer some questions from those who are in attendance at the Cafe. 

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Important Note: Each Upland Cafe can only accommodate a maximum of 50 players. If the Cafe reaches maximum capacity, additional players who join will be placed in a secondary overflow Cafe. Idan and Danny will be present at the first San Francisco Cafe and will only be able to answer questions from attendees in their Cafe. So it is important to arrive early if you want to ask any questions following the Community Town Hall.

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Can't attend in person? No worries! The Community Town Hall will be recorded and made available for viewing later on the Upland YouTube channel.

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What to Expect in Q3

This quarter, we’re continuing to improve and optimize recent releases such as the Upland onboarding experience, Cafes, racing, interoperability, and developer tools. After reviewing the data from these previous releases, we are now moving into optimization and phase 2 of development. Large projects like FIFA®, NFLPA, TOTEM, and Stock Car Pro Series are also being released in Q3, alongside the anticipated opening of Tokyo as the first Asian city in Upland!

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On the Metaventure side, we will be introducing the first opportunities for players to own Speedways and Cafe Metaventures. After significant improvements in the Metaventures application review process, we aim to introduce and optimize new tools that will speed up the UGC asset submission process. 

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One of our core values is to empower the community through new platform tools that will allow them to leverage the Upland ecosystem. We’re incredibly excited to keep building on the foundation of these programs and support their growth with new discoverability features like the Global Asset Search, expanding the ETH portal to additional asset classes, and increasing localization efforts for our communities from around the world. Before we jump into Q3 priorities, here’s a quick recap of Q2.

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Q2 Highlights

Q2 was filled with a variety of updates that focused on the health of the Upland economy, building up Upland’s social layer, and expansion of Metaventures. Key features include the long-awaited NFT Portal to Ethereum, Cafes, Map Assets, Speedway, and Go Kart Metaventures, and more. Catch up on some of our best stuff below:

April:

May:

June:

  • The Mission Center is launched to help set new Upland players up for success
  • 3D Avatar experiences come to Upland with the launch of Cafes in partnership with Nowhere 
  • The Genesis Week live in-person event in Las Vegas was a hit with the live city opening of Berlin and Exhibitor booths showcasing nodes, UDN, and UCN projects.
  • São Paulo Expansion  launched with two local partners: Los Grandes eSport Organization and Stock Car Pro Series
  • The NFT Ethereum Portal went live with download and reclaim of Block Explorers

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Q3 Development Priorities

The following projects are currently in development. Some of these items may be delivered in Q3 2023, while others may come in Q4 or beyond. 

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Platform Mechanics

The Mission System Phase 2

As a platform, Upland has many layers and features which take time to learn and master. Since our data shows that Q2 FTUE improvements of Explore and Mission Centers are a positive experience for new users, Upland will move to enrich these experiences. The Explore Center houses guided tutorials with tooltips and on-screen guidance for all players. Meanwhile, the Mission Center currently focuses on helping new players understand in-game mechanics and get started in Upland. In Q3, we are looking to expand the Mission System to host additional new missions for new players that cover other areas of the Upland Experience. Later on, missions for more advanced players will provide regular opportunities to keep coming back to Upland. 

Localization

Being mapped to the real world, Upland is truly a global metaverse with local communities enjoying a global and digital presence. Given the success of Spanish and Portuguese app translations for engagement, Upland is now working on additional in-app languages. In q3, we are looking to introduce Japanese, German, and French. 

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Cars

Player Agency for Racing

In its current state, players don’t have much of an impact on the outcome of races; other than the selection of their vehicle. Early in Q3, we plan to introduce a variety of features that will give players more control over how their cars perform on the racetrack. Players will gain the ability to control the positioning of their cars on the track so they can more directly affect how the car performs on certain parts of the track like turns and corners. The ability to control the speed of the car with Braking will also give players greater control of how their car handles the track. Lastly, players will be able to “boost” their cars during a race to rapidly increase their speed, which will be great for situations like straightaways. Overall, the goal is to allow players to have more influence on the outcome of races, so these features should go a long way to support that effort.

Racing for Stakes

Racing is a popular, competitive activity in person and in Upland. With the introduction of player agency in racing, we will be able to introduce racing for stakes. 

Cars as Transportation

The vision for cars (and eventually other vehicles) is to simulate their movement across the map, both within and between cities. This will enable players to travel to other cities without having to use transport terminals and will set the stage for additional features like cargo transport. This utility for cars will also allow car owners to travel to locations where public transportation may not be available. 

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Metaventures

Speedway Metaventures

The latest entry to the Metaventure catalog is Speedways, which allows players to design their own custom racetracks in Upland. Applications for Speedway Metaventures are already open, and once racing for stakes is available, Speedway owners can monetize. Speedways are just one more way that we are empowering the community to create their own content!

Cafes

Cafes in Upland launched in Beta mode as Upland-owned Cafes during Genesis Week. This allows us to experiment while optimizing on the experience. Users have been enjoying meeting in Cafes with their Ready Player Me avatars and many of the Upland content activities (such as the Roadmap AMA) are moving there. A great example was the full-house live stream watch party of the Stock Car Race. The next phase of Cafes is to have them user-owned - as a new type of Metaventure. These will be player-owned 3D spaces where players can connect and socialize via both text and proximity voice chat. We are working on developing features to allow Cafe owners to monetize with different business models. 

UPX Earnings for Terminal Owners 

In July, we officially implemented an UPX earnings program for all terminal owners in Upland. This means players who own a terminal will now receive a portion of the UPX earnings generated from terminal ticket sales. The UPX earnings rate will be set at 20% and will be distributed among terminal owners of the same type in their respective cities, solely based on their respective terminal and parcel size. UPX earnings will be distributed on a monthly basis, during the first week of each month, with the first payment set for the first week of August. 

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Terminal owners are now also eligible to apply for their own Metaventures to sell Block Explorers and Legits to their patrons. This, in turn, will attract more foot traffic to their properties. 

Improved Scale of Metaventure Applications

Last roadmap update, we declared a goal to actively improve on ways to speed up the Metaventure application process to scale the Metaventure program more efficiently. While in Q1, 96 Metaventures were launched, and 146 were approved, in Q2, 214 Metaventures were launched, and 456 were approved - showing a 2.2x and 2.13x improvement. We will continue to improve and automate the process. 

UGC Asset Review Automation

The process of submitting UGC assets for approval is becoming more efficient with a dedicated review tool in addition to onboarding a new dedicated designer to complete the design review. This will reduce operational steps, such as verifying the dimensions of all 3D models upon submission, and allow a quicker approval process. The KPIs for this automation is to shorten the design submission timeline from >5 days to ~2 days.

Variety Legit Shops

Our goal is to eventually have Metaventure Legit shop owners who can sell different types of Legits in one shop. This will provide a solution for all the Legits that currently do not have a dedicated secondary market presence.  

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Legits

FIFA Women’s World Cup™ in Upland

Upland and FIFA Officially Launch the FIFA Women’s World Cup Australia & New ZealandTM Experience To Unite Football Fans In The Metaverse. The full FIFA tournaments based experience in Upland will include: Digital Collectibles and Videos of FIFA’s tournaments; Platform-sponsored community events to increase a user’s Fan Score; FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023TM themed Cafes, 3D immersive spaces in which fans can socialize and connect; Community-created games and experiences leveraging FIFA tournament based digital collectibles. Uplanders will also have the chance to use the pass mechanism to claim historical Momentos from the men’s FIFA World Cup South Africa 2010™ and FIFA Women's World Cup Canada 2015™. 

New Mechanics for NFLPA LEGITS: Passes!

Exciting product developments are coming to the new NFLPA season in Upland! NFLPA Legits will be sold in Bundles with Pass mechanics! In addition, Players will be able to purchase team-specific bundles in the stadiums while having the option of purchasing variety and Pass bundles in the Upland store. This will make NFLPA Legits more accessible while maintaining the option for team-specific legit fandom that Upland’s NFLPA community has grown to appreciate. 

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Community

Chat Updates

The introduction of Chat has proven to have a positive effect on community engagement and participation, especially with the recent delivery of neighborhood chats. As such, Upland continues to explore ways to expand the capabilities of chat to allow players to connect in new and interesting ways. New types of channels that are being explored are asset-specific chats, user-moderated group chats, and Cafe/racing experience-specific chats. The new types require self-moderation tools that are in the works to ensure a great community experience. 

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NFT Portal 

Support for Ethereum Mainnet

Our vision for the Metaverse in general, and for the Upland ecosystem in particular, is to make it as open as possible. An important pillar of an open-blockchain economy is cross-platform and cross-chain interoperability. Following the successful deployment of the Download and Reclaim feature for Block Explorers to the Ethereum network, we are looking to expand this feature to additional asset classes such as cars, map assets, and ornaments. Each asset class will be available as a separate collection for easy viewing in OpenSea and other EVM marketplaces. Another improvement in the works is to simplify the reclaim feature to allow for a more automated experience using Metamask.   

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Third-Party Development

API Functionality Improvements

To allow for more utility to Upland NFTs and more possibilities for our developers, additional asset classes will be available in escrow for the developer APIs.

Tournaments

Through our Community Dev tools, Upland will give developers built-in options to run tournaments for their skill-based games. There will be two types of tournaments offered. The first will be mainly for single-player games where players will be ranked based on their individual performance; the top scorers will earn prizes. The second will be a bracket-style tournament where players can compete head-to-head for a chance to advance in the tournament. 

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TOTEM/PROTEM

As we are working to introduce life into the Upland metaverse, this addition to the Upland economy must be tested to ensure the right mechanism and incentives are in place. For this reason, we are introducing a gamified simulation before the real thing. The preparation for life will first come to Upland in the form of two new assets. The first will be TOTEMS: map assets that simulate some of the mechanics of living creatures, each with a set of behaviors that determines how they should be nurtured. The second will be PROTEM, a temporary currency that will be ultimately redeemable 1:1 for STEM. This gives the Upland team an opportunity to test and optimize this groundbreaking system before a full release in the future. 

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