6 ms·

Historic sale of a Gala Games Fantasy MMORPG in-game NFT item for US$800K

24 points by aukiman 6y ago

monkpit 6y ago
So this is some kind of blockchain thing? The article just kind of dives in and I’m lacking context, but it seems interesting. Can anyone give a brief overview?
- jbob2000 6y ago
  Sounds like whale-catching mobile games on a much bigger scale; Create a fake world with a bunch of fake restrictions, line up a bunch of bored computer nerds, get them to feel superior over one another by demonstrating their wealth with the purchase of expensive bits and bytes. The cryptocurrency talk is just the mumbo jumbo to catch the idiots. It’s like those alternative healthcare practitioners who sprinkle in the words “study” and “research” to make their quackery sound legit to the unsuspecting.
  - bserge 6y ago
    So, Eve with pseudo-8bit graphics? I always wanted something like Eve in a fantasy setting, but damn I hate Minecraft-like graphics :/
    - aukiman 6y ago
      I'd probably venture low-poly 'stylised' as their game graphic. Admittedly Mirandus isn't out for pre-alpha till 2nd half 2021 but they do give sneak preview posts weekly if time permits - https://gogalagames.medium.com/mirandus-monday-a-broader-view-of-the-world-5edc416f7844 https://gogalagames.medium.com/mirandus-monday-a-broader-vie...
  - monkpit 6y ago
    Sounds like Linden dollars and Second Life... round 2
    - Supermancho 6y ago
      Star Citizen was, at least, round 2 with spending far higher than this. This is just round-and-round.
    - vorpalhex 6y ago
      I remember most SL players at least being near break even, often times bulk selling hair styles or furniture to pay for activities. Though then again I also remember sinking $60 in a single month to develop out an ingame research laboratory...
- floatingatoll 6y ago
  I'll try, but I'm not a fan, so I may get it wrong and/or fail to disguise my (negative) feelings. Imagine an MMORPG that uses a blockchain economy not only for currency transactions but also for secure storage of items. Today, we take for granted the 'vault' space offered in games, but by storing items and currency both on the blockchain, new opportunities for in-app purchase become available that players will surely enjoy interacting with. In this article, a 'bank' is sold for $800,000 USD, and the purchaser of that 'bank' will, presumably, get a fractional share of the revenue from all 'vault this item' paid transactions. Since payment can occur either using in-game currency and/or real money transactions, and presuming they get a blockchain currency listed on Coinbase, the owner of the castle will be able to cash out their revenue stream into their real world bank account. I'm probably missing some subtle aspect of the specifics here, but that's what I took away from it. I assume the creator of the game is hoping that the SEC will not realize that this is an $800,000 investment in a public offering of stock in their still-vaporware game. I also assume that by taking advantage of the Coinbase tax-paperwork infrastructure, the game's operators will attempt to have no legal obligation to register as a financial institution, or otherwise owe any regulatory debt. You may find value in reading the novel 'REAMDE' as it spends some amount of time walking through the implications of a world where you can earn real money using virtual gameplay.
- monkpit 6y ago
  A bit of an overview of the game here: https://egamers.io/this-new-mmorpg-sells-5-citadels-for-1-36-million-usd-each/ https://egamers.io/this-new-mmorpg-sells-5-citadels-for-1-36...
rlyshw 6y ago
I read a few sentences and am wondering what an NFT is. I’m familiar with OpenSea but there really is not much explanation here for people not already deeply embedded in this world.
- vmception 6y ago
  Non-Fungible Token. Which is the name of the protocol standard, and the abbreviation has evolved into a colloquialism in the art/game/collector world that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the protocol standard. But it is referring to unique collectibles. The blockchain protocol aspect improves on the pricing and provenance of the asset, as one can prove when it was created (before or after another similar one, for proof of the original creation), and the exact amount paid for it at that time, to better illuminate prior market value. The art world has had trouble with all of this for millenia including in the present.
notadog 6y ago
NFT = non-fungible token, for the unaware
duskwuff 6y ago
Man, I really don't get the point of this. (And I mean the game in general, not just the sale of this franchise.) It's like blockchain play-acting. Using a blockchain to track the status of objects which only exist within an online game, and which are only accessible within that game, makes no sense to me. Ultimately, the status of those objects is subject to the whims of the game and its operator, not the blockchain -- since they control the rules of the game. If they want to make the game stop recognizing your "property", or change what it represents in game, that's always something they can do; throwing a blockchain at it doesn't change that. Also: I can't help but feel really suspicious about a game whose primary feature appears to be its monetization strategy, rather than its gameplay. (Read the rest of the blog -- there's virtually nothing in there about what the game actually is!) Does anyone actually play these games to have fun, or is it just a way for cryptocurrency fans to find even more esoteric things to invest in?
- NathanKP 6y ago
  It looks to me like its in the same vein as Pokemon Cards, Yu-Gi-Oh cards, etc. Very few people actually "play". They just collect for the sake of collecting, and they buy out of fear of missing out on exclusives. It isn't a model that appeals to everyone, but it appeals really well to some whales, hence it exists.
  - drchopchop 6y ago
    Well, you wouldn't buy Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Magic: The Gathering cards if you hadn't at least spent some time playing. Those are games which have had, at least at some point in their lifespan, large communities of players. I kinda doubt rich people are randomly buying mint alpha Black Lotus cards with no knowledge of the game? Side note: you can still fail with this type of monetization even if the game is huge (see: Diablo 3 auction house). Once you screw up the economy or drive away the player base, it's hard to recover.
    - the_jeremy 6y ago
      At least with pokemon, my friends and I all collected cards growing up, and none of us ever played the game (mainly because we were children who didn't understand the rules).
bluescrn 6y ago
Is there a game in there somewhere? Or just another way to speculate/gamble on cryptononsense? (Wasn't Star Citizen bad enough for monetizing not-yet-created in-game items?)
CptFribble 6y ago
The fact that co-founder of Zynga and creative director of FarmVille 2 are behind this enterprise is extremely telling. A few thoughts: 1. There is a small-but-non-trivial segment of gamers that are willing to spend huge amounts of money for in-game privileges. 2. There is a similar, somewhat-overlapping segment of gamers willing to spend huge amounts of time on a game, if that huge amount of time is rewarded with things that can't be accessed any other way (think grinding for top-tier rewards in a game like Path of Exile, some things just aren't accessible if you don't spend 1000+ hours) 3. Asia is driving the leading edge of game monetization now, and that leading edge is gacha games (lootbox mechanics/disguised digital slot machines). Looks like a couple of experts on extracting money from casual gamers have turned their attention to the whale/core gamers, and this attempt is blockchain-flavored. As a sibling comment (duskwuff) pointed out, blockchain is irrelevant to the actual value in-game of the item. The devs can change the game world to make your $1k sword irrelevant, and based on how these kinds of games usually go, they probably will - and the whale gamers will gladly open up their wallets to gamble on the latest and greatest. There is nothing innovative or exciting about Mirandus at all, unless you are looking for the fastest and most efficient way to fleece gamers - in fact, the Minecraft aesthetic feels like a little bit of a giveaway to the devs' real goals - lower the technical requirements to cast as wide a net as possible to pull in as many whales as possible. Maybe I'm wrong and this is the start of an Ethereum-powered future where digital goods are freed from platforms, but I doubt it. Most likely this is a digital cash grab that will launch to massive early-backer-funded fanfare, but will sink into the abyss of forgotten gacha games, once the devs have made their millions and start looking for a new target. Just like all the others.
- drchopchop 6y ago
  They'll run out of money before they attract enough whales to survive, because I don't see anything resembling a fun game here. It's like Minecraft, if you were farming for meaningless loot boxes all day. Just read some of these insane quotes: "The game will also have 1,000 farm bots which can mine a token, like a Bitcoin miner. You can buy a loot box, assemble the parts to make a farm bot, and set them loose mining. Or you can just buy a farm bot preassembled at an expensive price. Then you can mine the currency and provide them to other players in the game, either by giving it away or selling it. “It’s a way to compensate people who really believe in us in the beginning,” Schiermeyer said. “That’s how we’re structuring the blockchain. The people who were first to play it are going to get more than people who are last to play it. So, I mean, there’s definitely a reason to come in.” https://venturebeat.com/2020/03/10/zynga-cofounder-creates-blockchain-game-partners-for-decentralized-gaming/ https://venturebeat.com/2020/03/10/zynga-cofounder-creates-b...
ArtWomb 6y ago
NFT-releated: The Nine Most Innovative Crypto Artists of 2020 https://decrypt.co/52447/the-nine-most-innovative-crypto-artists-of-2020 https://decrypt.co/52447/the-nine-most-innovative-crypto-art... $MEME would make Duchamp proud ;) https://dontbuymeme.com/ https://dontbuymeme.com/
heptathorp 6y ago
Note for those surprised by the price tag and talking about whales: this is not like your typical in-game purchase like a special sword, unique mount, or even skins in CS:GO. These tokens implement core gameplay functionality that other players will have to pay to use -- think dungeons in Legend of Zelda, but if another player could own a dungeon and you had to pay them to go inside. So really, these people are buying a stake in the game with the expectation of profiting if the game is a success. I expect the SEC will be all over this once they catch up. It took them long enough to take action against XRP though which is pretty open-and-shut, so this might take a while.
Priem19 6y ago
Getting sick and tired of this blockchain nonsense. The whole industry is a cash-grabbing hype.

24 points by aukiman 6y ago

So this is some kind of blockchain thing? The article just kind of dives in and I’m lacking context, but it seems interesting. Can anyone give a brief overview?

jbob2000 6y ago
Sounds like whale-catching mobile games on a much bigger scale; Create a fake world with a bunch of fake restrictions, line up a bunch of bored computer nerds, get them to feel superior over one another by demonstrating their wealth with the purchase of expensive bits and bytes. The cryptocurrency talk is just the mumbo jumbo to catch the idiots. It’s like those alternative healthcare practitioners who sprinkle in the words “study” and “research” to make their quackery sound legit to the unsuspecting.
- bserge 6y ago
  So, Eve with pseudo-8bit graphics? I always wanted something like Eve in a fantasy setting, but damn I hate Minecraft-like graphics :/
  - aukiman 6y ago
    I'd probably venture low-poly 'stylised' as their game graphic. Admittedly Mirandus isn't out for pre-alpha till 2nd half 2021 but they do give sneak preview posts weekly if time permits - https://gogalagames.medium.com/mirandus-monday-a-broader-view-of-the-world-5edc416f7844 https://gogalagames.medium.com/mirandus-monday-a-broader-vie...
- monkpit 6y ago
  Sounds like Linden dollars and Second Life... round 2
  - Supermancho 6y ago
    Star Citizen was, at least, round 2 with spending far higher than this. This is just round-and-round.
  - vorpalhex 6y ago
    I remember most SL players at least being near break even, often times bulk selling hair styles or furniture to pay for activities. Though then again I also remember sinking $60 in a single month to develop out an ingame research laboratory...
floatingatoll 6y ago
I'll try, but I'm not a fan, so I may get it wrong and/or fail to disguise my (negative) feelings. Imagine an MMORPG that uses a blockchain economy not only for currency transactions but also for secure storage of items. Today, we take for granted the 'vault' space offered in games, but by storing items and currency both on the blockchain, new opportunities for in-app purchase become available that players will surely enjoy interacting with. In this article, a 'bank' is sold for $800,000 USD, and the purchaser of that 'bank' will, presumably, get a fractional share of the revenue from all 'vault this item' paid transactions. Since payment can occur either using in-game currency and/or real money transactions, and presuming they get a blockchain currency listed on Coinbase, the owner of the castle will be able to cash out their revenue stream into their real world bank account. I'm probably missing some subtle aspect of the specifics here, but that's what I took away from it. I assume the creator of the game is hoping that the SEC will not realize that this is an $800,000 investment in a public offering of stock in their still-vaporware game. I also assume that by taking advantage of the Coinbase tax-paperwork infrastructure, the game's operators will attempt to have no legal obligation to register as a financial institution, or otherwise owe any regulatory debt. You may find value in reading the novel 'REAMDE' as it spends some amount of time walking through the implications of a world where you can earn real money using virtual gameplay.
monkpit 6y ago
A bit of an overview of the game here: https://egamers.io/this-new-mmorpg-sells-5-citadels-for-1-36-million-usd-each/ https://egamers.io/this-new-mmorpg-sells-5-citadels-for-1-36...

rlyshw 6y ago

I read a few sentences and am wondering what an NFT is. I’m familiar with OpenSea but there really is not much explanation here for people not already deeply embedded in this world.

vmception 6y ago
Non-Fungible Token. Which is the name of the protocol standard, and the abbreviation has evolved into a colloquialism in the art/game/collector world that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the protocol standard. But it is referring to unique collectibles. The blockchain protocol aspect improves on the pricing and provenance of the asset, as one can prove when it was created (before or after another similar one, for proof of the original creation), and the exact amount paid for it at that time, to better illuminate prior market value. The art world has had trouble with all of this for millenia including in the present.

notadog 6y ago

NFT = non-fungible token, for the unaware

duskwuff 6y ago

Man, I really don't get the point of this. (And I mean the game in general, not just the sale of this franchise.) It's like blockchain play-acting. Using a blockchain to track the status of objects which only exist within an online game, and which are only accessible within that game, makes no sense to me. Ultimately, the status of those objects is subject to the whims of the game and its operator, not the blockchain -- since they control the rules of the game. If they want to make the game stop recognizing your "property", or change what it represents in game, that's always something they can do; throwing a blockchain at it doesn't change that. Also: I can't help but feel really suspicious about a game whose primary feature appears to be its monetization strategy, rather than its gameplay. (Read the rest of the blog -- there's virtually nothing in there about what the game actually is!) Does anyone actually play these games to have fun, or is it just a way for cryptocurrency fans to find even more esoteric things to invest in?

NathanKP 6y ago
It looks to me like its in the same vein as Pokemon Cards, Yu-Gi-Oh cards, etc. Very few people actually "play". They just collect for the sake of collecting, and they buy out of fear of missing out on exclusives. It isn't a model that appeals to everyone, but it appeals really well to some whales, hence it exists.
- drchopchop 6y ago
  Well, you wouldn't buy Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Magic: The Gathering cards if you hadn't at least spent some time playing. Those are games which have had, at least at some point in their lifespan, large communities of players. I kinda doubt rich people are randomly buying mint alpha Black Lotus cards with no knowledge of the game? Side note: you can still fail with this type of monetization even if the game is huge (see: Diablo 3 auction house). Once you screw up the economy or drive away the player base, it's hard to recover.
  - the_jeremy 6y ago
    At least with pokemon, my friends and I all collected cards growing up, and none of us ever played the game (mainly because we were children who didn't understand the rules).

bluescrn 6y ago

Is there a game in there somewhere? Or just another way to speculate/gamble on cryptononsense? (Wasn't Star Citizen bad enough for monetizing not-yet-created in-game items?)

CptFribble 6y ago

The fact that co-founder of Zynga and creative director of FarmVille 2 are behind this enterprise is extremely telling. A few thoughts: 1. There is a small-but-non-trivial segment of gamers that are willing to spend huge amounts of money for in-game privileges. 2. There is a similar, somewhat-overlapping segment of gamers willing to spend huge amounts of time on a game, if that huge amount of time is rewarded with things that can't be accessed any other way (think grinding for top-tier rewards in a game like Path of Exile, some things just aren't accessible if you don't spend 1000+ hours) 3. Asia is driving the leading edge of game monetization now, and that leading edge is gacha games (lootbox mechanics/disguised digital slot machines). Looks like a couple of experts on extracting money from casual gamers have turned their attention to the whale/core gamers, and this attempt is blockchain-flavored. As a sibling comment (duskwuff) pointed out, blockchain is irrelevant to the actual value in-game of the item. The devs can change the game world to make your $1k sword irrelevant, and based on how these kinds of games usually go, they probably will - and the whale gamers will gladly open up their wallets to gamble on the latest and greatest. There is nothing innovative or exciting about Mirandus at all, unless you are looking for the fastest and most efficient way to fleece gamers - in fact, the Minecraft aesthetic feels like a little bit of a giveaway to the devs' real goals - lower the technical requirements to cast as wide a net as possible to pull in as many whales as possible. Maybe I'm wrong and this is the start of an Ethereum-powered future where digital goods are freed from platforms, but I doubt it. Most likely this is a digital cash grab that will launch to massive early-backer-funded fanfare, but will sink into the abyss of forgotten gacha games, once the devs have made their millions and start looking for a new target. Just like all the others.

drchopchop 6y ago
They'll run out of money before they attract enough whales to survive, because I don't see anything resembling a fun game here. It's like Minecraft, if you were farming for meaningless loot boxes all day. Just read some of these insane quotes: "The game will also have 1,000 farm bots which can mine a token, like a Bitcoin miner. You can buy a loot box, assemble the parts to make a farm bot, and set them loose mining. Or you can just buy a farm bot preassembled at an expensive price. Then you can mine the currency and provide them to other players in the game, either by giving it away or selling it. “It’s a way to compensate people who really believe in us in the beginning,” Schiermeyer said. “That’s how we’re structuring the blockchain. The people who were first to play it are going to get more than people who are last to play it. So, I mean, there’s definitely a reason to come in.” https://venturebeat.com/2020/03/10/zynga-cofounder-creates-blockchain-game-partners-for-decentralized-gaming/ https://venturebeat.com/2020/03/10/zynga-cofounder-creates-b...

ArtWomb 6y ago

NFT-releated: The Nine Most Innovative Crypto Artists of 2020 https://decrypt.co/52447/the-nine-most-innovative-crypto-artists-of-2020 https://decrypt.co/52447/the-nine-most-innovative-crypto-art... $MEME would make Duchamp proud ;) https://dontbuymeme.com/ https://dontbuymeme.com/

heptathorp 6y ago

Note for those surprised by the price tag and talking about whales: this is not like your typical in-game purchase like a special sword, unique mount, or even skins in CS:GO. These tokens implement core gameplay functionality that other players will have to pay to use -- think dungeons in Legend of Zelda, but if another player could own a dungeon and you had to pay them to go inside. So really, these people are buying a stake in the game with the expectation of profiting if the game is a success. I expect the SEC will be all over this once they catch up. It took them long enough to take action against XRP though which is pretty open-and-shut, so this might take a while.

Priem19 6y ago

Getting sick and tired of this blockchain nonsense. The whole industry is a cash-grabbing hype.