# ICM: ZABAL Gamez

ZABAL Gamez is The ZAO's 3-month build-a-thon. Free to join, anyone welcome. It is a Farcaster-native onboarding event: ship something real in public, with a ZAO mentor in your corner, and earn Respect plus an on-chain credential. Build for a real 100+ member community, not a weekend you forget. Season 1 ran June to August 2026 and is complete.

## Three tracks
- Artist - musical / visual builds
- Builder - developer / aspiring-coder builds
- Creator - media / distribution / content builds

## Season 1 (2026) - complete
- June: recorded workshops (ZAO teachers + ecosystem partners on governance, Respect, and tools such as Claude Code, Empire Builder, POIDH and Juke). 31 workshops recorded, free to watch at zabalgamez.com/recordings.
- July: open build month. Ship a live URL + open-source repo + short demo + a cast to /zabal. Partial and work-in-progress drafts counted, and every build that cleared the bar earned Respect. 31 projects shipped by 15 people.
- August: Finals. The board closed August 16 and six finalists were named, two per track. The three finals ran as head-to-head battles on live WaveWarZ community battles in the last week of August. Champions: n3m (artist, The Call Out), ghostmintops (builder, Proof Drop and the ZABAL Recording Scout) and uniquebeing404 (creator, ColorZAO). Every finalist was paid from the USDC prize pool. Full record: zabalgamez.com/results.

## How it worked
- Entry: register on the site with a wallet + GitHub repo.
- Mentors: open roster (not a fixed panel) - each mentor defines the builder archetype they want and pairs with an open-submission builder; they get a Hats Protocol "ZAO Mentor" role.
- Submissions: a public GitHub-backed board at zabalgamez.com/submissions.
- Empire Builder + Clanker are optional tools (leaderboards, token launch), not requirements.
- What you walk away with: a live artifact + open repo; Respect for July finishers; a Hats Protocol collectible NFT on Base as a universal "I shipped at ZABAL Gamez" credential.

## Find it
- Site: zabalgamez.com (with a Z; old zabalgames.com redirects here). Results, recordings, finals, projects and standings are all on the site.
- Farcaster: the /zabal channel; tag posts "zabal gamez"
- Stream overlay for workshops/finals: zaoos.com/overlay/zabal-games

## Related boxes
- The ZAO (thezao)
- Zaal (zaal)
- WaveWarZ (wavewarz)