5 ms·

This seems like a positive move. I can't imagine that a game would ever be improved by having a blockchain waste my electricity as opposed to just having an ef

This seems like a positive move. I can't imagine that a game would ever be improved by having a blockchain waste my electricity as opposed to just having an efficient database store the same data on AWS. Realistically, these are all just scams, and they aren't trying to improve games at all.

elevenoh 5y ago
The more I hear scam w/o reasoning, the more likely i am to buy nfts. This is just like bitcoin in 2011.
- mminer237 5y ago
  Okay? NFTs are still fundamentally stupid and only exist because people can make money selling worthless...nothings. That meets the definition of "scam" in my book. Bitcoin at least has theoretical uses, although practically it is definitely a negative force in the world. Their current price does not logically make them useful.
  - X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
    > NFTs are still fundamentally stupid and only exist because people can make money selling worthless...nothings. What about games, or art?
    - ALittleLight 5y ago
      Neither of which use or benefit from NFTs.
    - djur 5y ago
      NFTs are not games or art and are not necessary or useful to sell games or art.
    - mminer237 5y ago
      If I buy a license of a game, I gain the legal ability to play the game. If I buy a print of and associated license to art, I gain the legal ability to look at and resell my copy the art. If I invest and buy the copyright to something, I can sell the above rights to others. If I pay to record on a blockchain my ownership a hash, I gain...nothing. I guess I could brag about how I paid money for a hexadecimal string when no one else was willing to? The theoretical advantage is that I can try to pawn it off on someone else for more money by convincing him that he can do the same to someone else.
      - X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
        > If I buy a print of and associated license to art, I gain the legal ability to look at and resell my copy the art. If I buy an NFT, I gain the defacto ability to resell my copy the art.
        lottin 5y ago
        You don't own your own copy of the art. And you can't sell something you don't own.
        X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
        Do you think anyone owns even a fraction of a bitcoin?
        lottin 5y ago
        I don't know if "own" is the right word, but people do have bitcoins under their control, yes, which means they can transfer them. Why?
        X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
        I have NFTs under my control. I can transfer them, list them for sale, w/e. It's the same relationship to cryptocurrencies I have control over. The IRS sure seems to think that I owned bitcoin.
    - StrLght 5y ago
      You mean games that have been doing just fine with just usual microtransactions? Sure big publishers are going to throw that away and switch to NFTs because... Why exactly? Are there any surveys or something on how much gamers care about NFTs in their games? Because if there's no such data I can't think of a single reason for publishers to care about this.
  - elevenoh 5y ago
    Genuinely curious: does the concept of intermediary-less digital ownership get you emotional? And if so, why?
    - mminer237 5y ago
      No, the concept sounds neat and impractical, but I don't care much about it. The implementations get me a bit angry. They enable criminals to extort and launder funds. They've led to massive profits for speculators at the expense of ignorant people throwing their own money into the bubble. They haven't benefited the average person at all. Bitcoin wastes monumentous amounts of energy, raising the price for everyone else and further polluting the earth; it has wild value fluctuations, making it completely unusable as a currency; and it has no underlying value. Then NFTs aren't even really ownership. You're buying the right to record a ownership of a hash. It just makes people feel like they own something unique. If you actually want to buy a digital assets without an intermediary, you contact the creator of a work and have him e-sign a contract giving you the copyrights in it. Boom. No need for a intermediary like OpenSea to skim its 2.5% off the top like NFTs do in practice, and you actually gets real rights in the work. People just don't do that because they don't want to actually give up something of actual value, they just want to rip people off, and because it's boring. NFTs are just a fad.
- joe_guy 5y ago
  Or it's like people who tossed all their 1960s baseball cards taking their regret out on beanie babies.
- djur 5y ago
  Amway has existed for 61 years.
- ohashi 5y ago
  The survivorship bias is strong here
- keewee7 5y ago
  There was an incredibly positive vibe around Bitcoin in 2011. It was still seen as a currency and not something to invest in to get rich fast.
- thephyber 5y ago
  I personally see lots of value and potential for smart contracts. The current NFTs making news for the highest transaction price are are terrible examples of that value and appear to be scams - they provide no significant value. It looks like speculation and greed without significant additional value. The only additional value I have seen so far appears to be the equivalent of a country club membership when you buy certain NFTs. I suspect there will be more opportunities for NFTs to change my mind in the future with governance, but that risks them stepping into SEC governed territory.
sieabah 5y ago
Kind of defeats the purpose of decentralization then when you put it all in AWS, huh?
- mminer237 5y ago
  Why would I want my game to be decentralized? That's a wasteful idea. You have to trust a central authority to make the game playable anyway. If you're concerned about the monopolization of computing, you can host the game's servers on Vultr or Hetzner or your basement instead. An SQL server anywhere will be better than an NFT blockchain.
  - sieabah 5y ago
    Sounds anti-competitive and monopolistic to deem all games must be centralized and hosted on cloud providers. Regardless of simplicity of hosting it implies a cost and maintenance to those systems. Meanwhile decentralization democratizes that cost to the people using said system. What you seem to disagree with is peer to peer applications? You can trust the creation of a game but don't have to rely on centralization to play. Conflating the two is a dishonest take. There are different concerns that would drive someone to make a decentralized game over a blockchain one. That different concern is what I see you failing to really grasp.
    - mminer237 5y ago
      I'm struggling to think of any examples of this or reasons for it. The game in the article is a single-player FPS where the developer mints limited runs of certain items and sells them as NFTs. There's no advantage to the players of any scarcity there even. Even with blockchain, you still need a centralized source to generate items. You couldn't trust clients to generate items themselves. (BTW, hosting a server is not that expensive, and if you're selling items, you should easily be able to pay for the maintenance with that profit. Asking me to waste my electricity to make up for the developer not wanting to pay for a server is not a very compelling argument.) And if the game is continually updated or the developer is the only one who can bestow items, you probably have to download updates from the centralized servers anyway to play, either directly or through the blockchain. If you're looking to play with others you didn't trust over LAN in a place with no Internet, I guess it would have an advantage? But it would only work if neither has gotten an item from anyone else more recently than both were online and there would still be easier ways to accomplish it.
drexlspivey 5y ago
The point of using NFTs in your game is that you don’t have to implement a marketplace yourself and you can just plug in the existing ones. As a bonus people can now trade their stuff from anywhere even outside your game and potentially even across games. NFTs aren’t any more stupid than the existing game cosmetics/collectibles.
dystopiabreaker 5y ago
using a blockchain costs no energy

elevenoh 5y ago

The more I hear scam w/o reasoning, the more likely i am to buy nfts. This is just like bitcoin in 2011.

mminer237 5y ago
Okay? NFTs are still fundamentally stupid and only exist because people can make money selling worthless...nothings. That meets the definition of "scam" in my book. Bitcoin at least has theoretical uses, although practically it is definitely a negative force in the world. Their current price does not logically make them useful.
- X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
  > NFTs are still fundamentally stupid and only exist because people can make money selling worthless...nothings. What about games, or art?
  - ALittleLight 5y ago
    Neither of which use or benefit from NFTs.
  - djur 5y ago
    NFTs are not games or art and are not necessary or useful to sell games or art.
  - mminer237 5y ago
    If I buy a license of a game, I gain the legal ability to play the game. If I buy a print of and associated license to art, I gain the legal ability to look at and resell my copy the art. If I invest and buy the copyright to something, I can sell the above rights to others. If I pay to record on a blockchain my ownership a hash, I gain...nothing. I guess I could brag about how I paid money for a hexadecimal string when no one else was willing to? The theoretical advantage is that I can try to pawn it off on someone else for more money by convincing him that he can do the same to someone else.
    - X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
      > If I buy a print of and associated license to art, I gain the legal ability to look at and resell my copy the art. If I buy an NFT, I gain the defacto ability to resell my copy the art.
      - lottin 5y ago
        You don't own your own copy of the art. And you can't sell something you don't own.
        X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
        Do you think anyone owns even a fraction of a bitcoin?
        lottin 5y ago
        I don't know if "own" is the right word, but people do have bitcoins under their control, yes, which means they can transfer them. Why?
        X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
        I have NFTs under my control. I can transfer them, list them for sale, w/e. It's the same relationship to cryptocurrencies I have control over. The IRS sure seems to think that I owned bitcoin.
  - StrLght 5y ago
    You mean games that have been doing just fine with just usual microtransactions? Sure big publishers are going to throw that away and switch to NFTs because... Why exactly? Are there any surveys or something on how much gamers care about NFTs in their games? Because if there's no such data I can't think of a single reason for publishers to care about this.
- elevenoh 5y ago
  Genuinely curious: does the concept of intermediary-less digital ownership get you emotional? And if so, why?
  - mminer237 5y ago
    No, the concept sounds neat and impractical, but I don't care much about it. The implementations get me a bit angry. They enable criminals to extort and launder funds. They've led to massive profits for speculators at the expense of ignorant people throwing their own money into the bubble. They haven't benefited the average person at all. Bitcoin wastes monumentous amounts of energy, raising the price for everyone else and further polluting the earth; it has wild value fluctuations, making it completely unusable as a currency; and it has no underlying value. Then NFTs aren't even really ownership. You're buying the right to record a ownership of a hash. It just makes people feel like they own something unique. If you actually want to buy a digital assets without an intermediary, you contact the creator of a work and have him e-sign a contract giving you the copyrights in it. Boom. No need for a intermediary like OpenSea to skim its 2.5% off the top like NFTs do in practice, and you actually gets real rights in the work. People just don't do that because they don't want to actually give up something of actual value, they just want to rip people off, and because it's boring. NFTs are just a fad.
joe_guy 5y ago
Or it's like people who tossed all their 1960s baseball cards taking their regret out on beanie babies.
djur 5y ago
Amway has existed for 61 years.
ohashi 5y ago
The survivorship bias is strong here
keewee7 5y ago
There was an incredibly positive vibe around Bitcoin in 2011. It was still seen as a currency and not something to invest in to get rich fast.
thephyber 5y ago
I personally see lots of value and potential for smart contracts. The current NFTs making news for the highest transaction price are are terrible examples of that value and appear to be scams - they provide no significant value. It looks like speculation and greed without significant additional value. The only additional value I have seen so far appears to be the equivalent of a country club membership when you buy certain NFTs. I suspect there will be more opportunities for NFTs to change my mind in the future with governance, but that risks them stepping into SEC governed territory.

sieabah 5y ago

Kind of defeats the purpose of decentralization then when you put it all in AWS, huh?

mminer237 5y ago
Why would I want my game to be decentralized? That's a wasteful idea. You have to trust a central authority to make the game playable anyway. If you're concerned about the monopolization of computing, you can host the game's servers on Vultr or Hetzner or your basement instead. An SQL server anywhere will be better than an NFT blockchain.
- sieabah 5y ago
  Sounds anti-competitive and monopolistic to deem all games must be centralized and hosted on cloud providers. Regardless of simplicity of hosting it implies a cost and maintenance to those systems. Meanwhile decentralization democratizes that cost to the people using said system. What you seem to disagree with is peer to peer applications? You can trust the creation of a game but don't have to rely on centralization to play. Conflating the two is a dishonest take. There are different concerns that would drive someone to make a decentralized game over a blockchain one. That different concern is what I see you failing to really grasp.
  - mminer237 5y ago
    I'm struggling to think of any examples of this or reasons for it. The game in the article is a single-player FPS where the developer mints limited runs of certain items and sells them as NFTs. There's no advantage to the players of any scarcity there even. Even with blockchain, you still need a centralized source to generate items. You couldn't trust clients to generate items themselves. (BTW, hosting a server is not that expensive, and if you're selling items, you should easily be able to pay for the maintenance with that profit. Asking me to waste my electricity to make up for the developer not wanting to pay for a server is not a very compelling argument.) And if the game is continually updated or the developer is the only one who can bestow items, you probably have to download updates from the centralized servers anyway to play, either directly or through the blockchain. If you're looking to play with others you didn't trust over LAN in a place with no Internet, I guess it would have an advantage? But it would only work if neither has gotten an item from anyone else more recently than both were online and there would still be easier ways to accomplish it.

drexlspivey 5y ago

The point of using NFTs in your game is that you don’t have to implement a marketplace yourself and you can just plug in the existing ones. As a bonus people can now trade their stuff from anywhere even outside your game and potentially even across games. NFTs aren’t any more stupid than the existing game cosmetics/collectibles.

dystopiabreaker 5y ago

using a blockchain costs no energy