RP1 — product design and strategy for a play-to-earn arena

RP1 — product design and strategy for a play-to-earn arena | Sina Oshaghi

01Context

Many small games, one competitive and economic layer.

RP1 — ReadyPlayerOne in the project’s own docs — is a mobile-first arena that aggregates lightweight HTML5 arcade games — Flappy Bird, Snake, Temple Run, Subway Surf and others — under one competitive and economic layer: daily and weekly leaderboard competitions, 1v1 wagered duels and ticket-gated tournaments, all settled in USDT through an on-chain wallet (BNB Smart Chain, BEP-20).

It is not pitched as a social network — the project’s own docs call it a “competitive visibility engine”. The reference points named throughout the research are Skillz, MPL, WinZO, Kongregate and Plato.

Not a social network: a competitive visibility engine.

02Problem

Competitive and rewarding without becoming a casino.

Casual HTML5 games are plentiful but rarely have a durable competitive or monetization layer — and the platforms that do add one, in crypto-gaming and play-to-earn, tend to read as casino products first and games second.

RP1 set out to design a system that feels genuinely competitive and rewarding without tipping into exploitative mechanics: every mechanic was scored against the Octalysis framework’s White-Hat / Black-Hat balance.

ESPN app, not Stake.com — say a player “earned” a prize, never that they “won big” or hit a “jackpot”.
— RP1 tone guideline

03Constraints

A USDT-only economy, a mobile-first canvas, a component set with gaps.

Settlement in USDT only, on BNB Smart Chain (BEP-20) — no utility token.
Mobile-first: one app, navigation locked to three tabs.
An existing component set with an 18-item gap list — no colour or type tokens, no motion spec, an undefined avatar system.
A tone guideline that ruled out casino language.

04My role

Research, scope and the spec — alongside a product owner.

Product design and strategy lead, working alongside a named product owner and a collaborator who authored the project’s later-stage game and community spec.

Owned

Gamification research: Octalysis across all 8 core drives, turned into an interactive scoring tool in English and Persian
MVP scoping: three-tab navigation, a single club, a USDT-only economy
Documented calls in the conflict-resolution log, including the Duel / Tournament / Rumble naming
The full wireframe spec across all 16 sections, each with a per-screen copy audit

Co-owned

Product direction, with the product owner

Collaborated

The canonical game and community spec — written by a collaborator; it superseded my earlier community draft

05Approach

Research first, then mechanics, then a ruthless descope.

Research came first: a wide pass across 20-plus competitive and casual-gaming platforms — Skillz, MPL, WinZO, Kongregate, Telegram mini-apps and others — then an Octalysis deep dive detailed enough to turn into an interactive scoring tool: an 8-drive audit, an octagon radar chart, journey-phase and engagement-loop builders and an ethics checklist.

From there, mechanics design: three mapped systems — a value-creation loop (how a low-balance player earns their way back in), an engagement loop (tournament, duel or club-store choices for a funded player) and a club retention loop with a formal state machine.

MVP descoping followed, tracked in a dated conflict-resolution log rather than left as silent rewrites. A 20-component reuse audit, ranked by reuse score, fed a full wireframe pass across all 16 sections — each with its own per-screen copy audit and a P1/P2/P3 issue log.

Six passes, in order

01
Platform research20-plus competitive and casual-gaming platforms
02
Octalysis audit8 core drives → an interactive scoring tool

The club retention loop

L1
Open the club
L2
See an opportunity

06Key decisions

Four calls that shaped the MVP

Recorded in the project’s dated conflict-resolution log, not decided in passing.

01
Lock navigation to three tabs: Club, Game, Wallet.
An earlier, much larger vision — a utility token, in-app betting, player-owned clubs and club stores — was cut down to a USDT-only, single-club product.
Alternatives
The earlier vision: a utility token, in-app betting, player-owned clubs and club stores.
Trade-off
A smaller economy — one club, no club stores, no token — in exchange for a scope that could be fully resolved.
Evidence
A fully resolved MVP scope and a 34-component build catalog (9 reused, 25 net-new) with a 3-week build order.

07Solution

One app, three tabs, every section wireframed.

The spec covers the whole app: onboarding with Google, Apple or email and OTP verification; a Games hub aggregating Solo Challenge, Duel, Team Battle and Tournaments; Today Spotlight, a daily single-game competition with a ticket buy-in and live leaderboard; Weekly Legend, a 7-day cross-game competition; Lucky Wheel; Chat; Notifications as rich transactional cards; a USDT-only Wallet with an earnings breakdown; Profile with achievements and an XP-style roadmap; and Settings.

Navigation is locked to three tabs — Club, Game, Wallet — with a single reusable Feed Card pattern (win announcement, tournament starting, near-miss, level-up, daily summary) carrying the Club tab. Three animation systems complete the spec: a profile-entry sequence, a six-keyframe level-up and ten event-based overlays.

Duel entry sheet: challenge a friend, or face a random opponent matched by skill

Duel setup: select a player, a format — time limited or race to target — and the prize

Game-over sheet in Today's Spotlight: score, rank, the points needed for the next rank and the remaining ticket time

Today's Spotlight sheet for the player holding first place, with the remaining time and a prompt to push the score higher

Wallet screen: total balance in USDT, withdraw and deposit, earnings by source, the on-chain wallet, and available, in-play and pending balances — Figure 04The Wallet: one currency, every earning source visible, and the funds locked in play shown separately.

Notification feed: transactional cards for deposits, withdrawals, prizes and duel results, each with its own actions — Figure 06Notifications are transactional cards — deposit, withdrawal, prize, duel and rumble results — each with its own actions.

08Icon system

One family of 150 icons gives the app its look.

I made the app’s icons with AI image generation and held every one to the same look: glossy orange enamel, brushed chrome and black glass, one soft light from above, the same three-quarter view and a soft shadow under each object. Gold, silver and bronze mark rank and reward — medals, coins, stars, crowns, trophies — so a prize looks like a prize on every screen.

The set works like a grammar: a base object takes a small badge for its state. A wallet takes an arrow in or out, a tick, a warning, a padlock or a bin; a challenge link takes an arrow to share it, swords for a duel, an hourglass while it waits and a cross when it fails; a gear turns a bell, a player or a shield into its settings. It started as one sheet of 53 icons and grew by 97 more, about seven at a time, as each flow needed its own — and the later rows sit beside the first without a seam.

AI drew each icon; one art direction makes 150 of them a family.

Visual Assets slide: eighteen of the 3D icons on purple glass tiles over a lit stage, beside the line “A Play-to-Earn HTML5 game platform on BNB Smart Chain — designed from a blank slate into a complete multi-mode competitive system with edge-case-proof flows”. — Figure 07My Visual Assets slide: eighteen of the 150 icons on the arena’s stage.

What keeps 150 icons one family

01
MaterialsThree surfaces for nearly everything; metal marks rank and reward.
- Glossy orange enamel
- Brushed chrome
- Black glass
- Gold, silver and bronze for rank and reward
02
FormSoft, chunky volumes that still read at tab-bar size.
- Rounded, bevelled edges
- One bold silhouette per object
- Symbols raised in chrome on black
03
Light and viewEvery object is lit and seen the same way.
- One soft light from above

Twenty-five 3D icons on purple glass tiles: home, game controller, wallet, player and play button, each in a later and an earlier version, then chat, a microphone, a bell, a settings gear, search, menus, a layout grid, play and upload plates, share, refresh, close and a box with a plus.

Thirty 3D icons on purple glass tiles: gold, silver and bronze medals, gold and silver coins and stars, a diamond, trophies and trophy plates, three crowns, rank shields and chevrons, 999 and 75 score badges, two podiums and three white display stands.

Thirty 3D icons on purple glass tiles: crossed swords, a shuffle arrow, battle badges, tickets, the Lucky Wheel and tickets for one to three spins, an infinity sign, stopwatches with a tick or a warning, a timer dial, hourglasses, a tick with a flag or a crown, target pins and tournament bracket cards.

Twenty 3D icons on purple glass tiles: a wallet with an arrow out or in, a tick, a gauge, a warning, a padlock or a bin, an open wallet, cash stacks, coins turning into USDT, a 100 coin, a coin with a cross, a megaphone, play buttons with a price tag or a coin, swords over a wallet warning and a bag with a bolt.

Twenty 3D icons on purple glass tiles: a gear on a player, a bell, a shield, a warning and a document, a controller with a shield, a player with a bin, documents with a tick or a padlock, a warning and info plate, sign-out, a lifebuoy, a headset, information, an open door, a padlock, two shields and three map pins.

09Every screen

160 screens, edge states included

Every screen on the App page of the Figma file, exported on 26 September 2026 at a 390-pixel phone width and grouped by flow, from sign-in to the animation systems. A frame the file repeats is shown once: Team Battle repeats twenty-one of the duel’s frames, so its tab holds the five that are its own. The sample QR codes and the sign-in email address are pixelated.

The edge states are drawn, not implied: a wrong email code, a friend who can’t cover the stake, an expired challenge link, an empty notification list, a confirmation before deleting the account. The four ticketed modes — Solo Challenge, Tournaments, Today’s Spotlight and Weekly Legend — share one entry: buy a ticket, or, short of balance, watch an ad or deposit. The three timed ones also share one ending, from game over to the final rank.

RP1 on a phone — Sign-in: Continue with email, with the email address pixelated

10Outcomes

What came out of this phase

RP1 is pre-launch — there is no shipped-product metric to report yet, and this case study doesn’t pretend otherwise.

A fully resolved MVP scope: Three-tab navigation, a single club and a USDT-only economy.; Delivered output · RP1 MVP scope and conflict-resolution log
A build catalog of 34 components: 9 reused, 25 net-new, sequenced into a 3-week build order.; Delivered output · RP1 build catalog
A wireframe spec across all 16 sections: Each with a per-screen copy audit and a P1/P2/P3 issue log; 73 exported screens.; Delivered output · Figma — Game Design file
A reusable interactive Octalysis tool: 8-drive audit, radar chart, journey and loop builders, ethics checklist — in English and Persian.; Delivered output · html5-game-gamification-system (React)

What was delivered

Onboarding, Games hub, Today Spotlight, Weekly Legend, Duel, Lucky Wheel, Chat, Notifications, Wallet, Profile and Settings — wireframed
Three animation systems: profile entry, six-keyframe level-up, ten event overlays
One reusable Feed Card pattern carrying the Club tab
A family of 150 AI-made 3D icons that gives every screen one look

11What I learned

What I learned

01
A dated conflict-resolution log beats silent rewrites
Renaming Duel, Tournament and Rumble, or formally marking an older spec as superseded, kept the whole team working from the same current truth instead of arguing from stale docs.
02
Even a well-documented project drifts
The wallet flow names BNB Smart Chain (BEP-20) in the newer, Figma-linked documentation, while an earlier draft says TRC-20/ERC-20. Treating the more recent, cross-referenced source as canonical is right — and a reminder that only a full re-read surfaces small drifts.

Language

RP1 — Multi-Game Play-to-Earn Arena