To riff a little on the Polkadot City analogy in the coreplay appendix, you can think of a coretime collective as a professional football team.
Right now Polkadot City is a team of great players who don’t yet know how to play as a team, because they’re used to playing for their own clubs in their own leagues (parachains or relay).
Not only that, they don’t even really know the game they’re supposed to be playing.
The team occupies an empty stadium (blockspace) and are funded by a benevolent owner (treasury) that is fast reaching the limits of their patience.
They’re playing in a league flush with money, but very little soul and for the most part, the young fans (token holders) have only known success winning trophies, but are suddenly coming to terms with the fact that they’re in danger of becoming a fading force - without the financial firepower to compete with the biggest clubs or retain their most prized talent.
Everyone kinda agrees that football is a bit boring, outdated and corrupt, but it doesn’t seem like anything will change that.
Into this confused mix a new manager is parachuted in (coretime), a quirky, multi-lingual type, with a strange name and no obvious heritage, who does not fit easily within existing domain conventions.
“who?” ask the fans who expected a marquee name they could trust, not some artistic statement.
With limited resources, the manager sets about dismantling the club’s processes and culture, creating a new training regime, youth development policy, training regimes and encouraging alternative ways of playing.
He introduces yoga to the beer loving players, buys young talent no-one has heard of from countries they didn’t know existed on the cheap. He adopts an innovative playing style that confuses opponents and creates a team spirit based around winning in style by encouraging experimentation.
Think…
Initially none of it makes sense and there are lots of complaints from fans, but suddenly the team start winning games (filling blockspace, generating network revenues), the players start playing a new brand of football and they start making the other teams look like relics of a bygone era.
With the shackles of convention released, old players are rejuvenated, new ones rise to become the best in the world - the fans can’t believe their eyes… they’re in football fantasy land…
They have quite literally changed the game…
(There is a proper explaination coming, but think of this as a palate cleanser).
(if you were an Arsenal fan c. 2003/4 you might recognise the story).