30 ms·

If you let people import their stuff, it's an excellent way to bootstrap a player base, which is the hardest part of game development by far.

louloulou 5y ago
Exactly, and they're not mutually exclusive. You can still let players buy new stuff on your platform as well as import other value/items.
- antifa 5y ago
  Why would a dev write a game that detects another game's micro transactions and then give the player the fruit of the dev's labor while ignoring that the other game's devs got the profits of the micro transactions? This is not a solid business plan.
meheleventyone 5y ago
But having a business model predicated on user acquisition by timing for a competitor game going out of business doesn’t seem a sensible bootstrapping plan.
- IanCal 5y ago
  You don't need them to go out of business, people enjoy multiple games.
  - meheleventyone 5y ago
    In this space people tend to have a main game and customer retention is a significant part of revenue. So making your game compatible with a competitor such that they could easily walk away would work against your best interests. Otherwise these co-marketing activities would already exist since there is no inherent need for a blockchain to implement them. A soft example of this is games that include characters from other games. A lot of these suggestions fall foul of the same problem that they offer a great deal for the customer but not for the game maker. Which whilst altruistic is rather naive to commercial reality. A value add model like the Amiibo would work better but again is predicated on developers actually capturing some revenue from supporting it.
    - antifa 5y ago
      > A lot of these suggestions fall foul of the same problem that they offer a great deal for the customer If you ignore that NFTs are basically a glorfied registry for micro transactions. This is like buying a $200 refill cup from a movie theater then being allowed to use it at a competing movie theater chain, except the cup isn't real. It was never a good deal, and there's no incentive for theater's to join in.
      - meheleventyone 5y ago
        Yes my point is that the ideas aren’t viable even if they weren’t suggesting NFTs and that business models exist for similar things that work but wouldn’t for NFTs.
    - IanCal 5y ago
      > Otherwise these co-marketing activities would already exist since there is no inherent need for a blockchain to implement them. One of the big changes in the way I've viewed this is because the blockchain we're talking about already exists. A lot of the technology is already there so over time the idea of creating a new shared database and managing it becomes more work than just using some libraries and an existing shared database - even with limitations. > A value add model like the Amiibo would work better but again is predicated on developers actually capturing some revenue from supporting it. Selling the game, surely.
      - meheleventyone 5y ago
        Amiibo support itself doesn’t sell games so I doubt an NFT equivalent would either. The failure of the whole toys-to-life stuff speaks to this as well. And that technology exists does not make a notional use of it something people actually want or need. The reason for a lack of co-marketing isn’t a lack of technology as the parts of my post you didn’t quote note.
  - twic 5y ago
    Were any of the NFT games on Steam before this point doing this?
- pcstl 5y ago
  You don't need to time it! And this wouldn't be the core business model, just an easy win if/when that happened.
  - meheleventyone 5y ago
    Sure but that is a much weaker case for using NFTs versus doing something similar without them. For example running a free weekend or marketing campaign.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
munk-a 5y ago
How is this a more effective way to bootstrap a player base than, say, handing out drops on twitch or having seasonal item packs up for free for a limited time on the store (i.e. "Until Nov 1 you can get the Halloween cosmetic pack for free on steam if you own our game"). In all the cases I can think of tying your promotion to an NFT that needed to be earned in a different game is purely going to lower the number of people that this promotion will apply to while not at all lowering the cost in terms of dev time & art (because while an NFT might indicate a Santa Hat you actually need to build that item as an art asset in your game and make sure it's compatible with models and clipping and all that junk). I feel like most of the NFT arguments I've read in this thread are assuming that somehow using an NFT gets you out of the cost of actually spending the art & dev time on producing the cosmetic - just because it exists in another game doesn't make it appreciably any cheaper to add to your game. I will admit there are ways to make art more "valuable" by actually limiting the number of available copies - but that trendiness is hard to effectively harness. Beanie Babies took off in the 90s and everyone's brother started buying up newly released ones... almost all of which were worthless because they scaled up their production to meet demand - and if they hadn't they wouldn't have been easy to get a hold of.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> If you let people import their stuff, it's an excellent way to bootstrap a player base So, its good for a competitor to the original game developer. What motivates the original developer? If they want to bootstrap a new game feom an old game user base and purchases DB, they can do it without a public database of assets while excluding competitors from the same opportunity.

louloulou 5y ago

Exactly, and they're not mutually exclusive. You can still let players buy new stuff on your platform as well as import other value/items.

antifa 5y ago
Why would a dev write a game that detects another game's micro transactions and then give the player the fruit of the dev's labor while ignoring that the other game's devs got the profits of the micro transactions? This is not a solid business plan.

meheleventyone 5y ago

But having a business model predicated on user acquisition by timing for a competitor game going out of business doesn’t seem a sensible bootstrapping plan.

IanCal 5y ago
You don't need them to go out of business, people enjoy multiple games.
- meheleventyone 5y ago
  In this space people tend to have a main game and customer retention is a significant part of revenue. So making your game compatible with a competitor such that they could easily walk away would work against your best interests. Otherwise these co-marketing activities would already exist since there is no inherent need for a blockchain to implement them. A soft example of this is games that include characters from other games. A lot of these suggestions fall foul of the same problem that they offer a great deal for the customer but not for the game maker. Which whilst altruistic is rather naive to commercial reality. A value add model like the Amiibo would work better but again is predicated on developers actually capturing some revenue from supporting it.
  - antifa 5y ago
    > A lot of these suggestions fall foul of the same problem that they offer a great deal for the customer If you ignore that NFTs are basically a glorfied registry for micro transactions. This is like buying a $200 refill cup from a movie theater then being allowed to use it at a competing movie theater chain, except the cup isn't real. It was never a good deal, and there's no incentive for theater's to join in.
    - meheleventyone 5y ago
      Yes my point is that the ideas aren’t viable even if they weren’t suggesting NFTs and that business models exist for similar things that work but wouldn’t for NFTs.
  - IanCal 5y ago
    > Otherwise these co-marketing activities would already exist since there is no inherent need for a blockchain to implement them. One of the big changes in the way I've viewed this is because the blockchain we're talking about already exists. A lot of the technology is already there so over time the idea of creating a new shared database and managing it becomes more work than just using some libraries and an existing shared database - even with limitations. > A value add model like the Amiibo would work better but again is predicated on developers actually capturing some revenue from supporting it. Selling the game, surely.
    - meheleventyone 5y ago
      Amiibo support itself doesn’t sell games so I doubt an NFT equivalent would either. The failure of the whole toys-to-life stuff speaks to this as well. And that technology exists does not make a notional use of it something people actually want or need. The reason for a lack of co-marketing isn’t a lack of technology as the parts of my post you didn’t quote note.
- twic 5y ago
  Were any of the NFT games on Steam before this point doing this?
pcstl 5y ago
You don't need to time it! And this wouldn't be the core business model, just an easy win if/when that happened.
- meheleventyone 5y ago
  Sure but that is a much weaker case for using NFTs versus doing something similar without them. For example running a free weekend or marketing campaign.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

munk-a 5y ago

How is this a more effective way to bootstrap a player base than, say, handing out drops on twitch or having seasonal item packs up for free for a limited time on the store (i.e. "Until Nov 1 you can get the Halloween cosmetic pack for free on steam if you own our game"). In all the cases I can think of tying your promotion to an NFT that needed to be earned in a different game is purely going to lower the number of people that this promotion will apply to while not at all lowering the cost in terms of dev time & art (because while an NFT might indicate a Santa Hat you actually need to build that item as an art asset in your game and make sure it's compatible with models and clipping and all that junk). I feel like most of the NFT arguments I've read in this thread are assuming that somehow using an NFT gets you out of the cost of actually spending the art & dev time on producing the cosmetic - just because it exists in another game doesn't make it appreciably any cheaper to add to your game. I will admit there are ways to make art more "valuable" by actually limiting the number of available copies - but that trendiness is hard to effectively harness. Beanie Babies took off in the 90s and everyone's brother started buying up newly released ones... almost all of which were worthless because they scaled up their production to meet demand - and if they hadn't they wouldn't have been easy to get a hold of.

dragonwriter 5y ago

> If you let people import their stuff, it's an excellent way to bootstrap a player base So, its good for a competitor to the original game developer. What motivates the original developer? If they want to bootstrap a new game feom an old game user base and purchases DB, they can do it without a public database of assets while excluding competitors from the same opportunity.