You should know, $1000 is approximately one day or less of compensation for the dev team on a project of this scale. The current cost of dev is close to $30K per month for a dozen full time developers and artists and writers and staff. A game of this scale routinely costs millions to produce but our entire budget is between a half and three quarters of a million. Nearly $100,000 has already been spent on development to date. And we consider this a shoestring budget for a typical MMORPG game project of this scale for multiplatform release.

As for "the less fortunate" I, in addition to being on the Chibera community relations team, also founded the @YouAreHOPE Foundation last fall, a year ago on October 16th. We are well aware at YouAreHOPE of the less fortunate and with the help of community partnerships and steemians all over the world, we have helped 1000s of people in a dozen countries with basic humanitarian aid in disadvantaged locales and emergency crisis conditions. We can actually do a lot more for them for a lot less than a game costs to produce, but both are worthy projects.

We have had writing contests, music contests, art contests and more, we noted social media campaigns were not eligible in the post though.

Steem monsters routinely spends 500-600 per post using bots to boost their posts, so your allegation that $1000 is "a lot of money" for one of the largest selling game genres in the world doesn't mesh with your admiration of an actual niche card game that has spent close to half a thousand per post, dozens of times, amassing well over a million dollars in funding for a game that only runs on ONE platform and isn't in a genre even a tenth the size of mmorpgs.

We do not feel at this time spending our investors and player crowdfunded funds on trended botted posts is the best use of our fanbases money like the card game did. Many were unhappy with them for doing so.

The curation trail idea is the one we have not yet already done or explored, so we will consider that for your entry. Thanks!