10 ms·

Crypto’s hottest game is facing an economic maelstrom

65 points by samizdis 5y ago

himlion 5y ago
I'm heavily invested into axie (5 figures), happy to answer any questions.
- chrispickels 5y ago
  What is the source of the token rewards? Are the tokens pre-mined and then handed out based on games played on Axie’s servers? Just trying to understand the innovation. Is it primarily that game rewards can be exchanged on chain, while the granting of the rewards is still centralized?
  - himlion 5y ago
    Two tokens: AXS is the governance token and is premined, mainly held to fund the team, given out as rewards to players and given out as rewards for keeping AXS staked. Used for breeding new Axies SLP is the token gained by playing the game, this token is also used for breeding new Axies. The game servers sign a message allowing you to claim the SLP from a smart contract on the ronin chain, this part is not completely decentralized.
- elliekelly 5y ago
  Did you pay the $1,000 entry fee yourself or did you get a “scholarship” like the article mentions? How does one invest more than the $1,000 entry fee? Do you sponsor “scholarships”? How long ago did you start playing and how much time have you put into the game? What return (if any) have you made on your time/monetary investment? What return (if any) do you expect to make and over what horizon? Thanks for agreeing to answer questions! I’m very intrigued!
  - ajot 5y ago
    Not OP, but about to enter and give a scholarship to a friend. There is no 1kUSD entry fee. What you need to enter is to buy three Axies/Pokemon. The starting point for this is nowadays near 300 USD, but buying a decent team is around 500 USD.
  - himlion 5y ago
    Yes, I have about 100 "scholars" from the Philippines working for me. I put in about $30,000 a few months ago. Return has been 300%+ I'm also involved in breeding new axies which is more complex and time consuming. The return of that varies a lot, but can be very profitable, very hard to put a number on that but I'd say las few weeks it was probably 250% APR if you didn't get too unlucky. I would probably cash out a lot of things, but I feel bad for making 100 people suddenly unemployed, so I will probably stop expanding but not actually selling off all my things.
    - zerostate 5y ago
      Would you be interested in selling/handing off your 100/person team to someone else? Am in the crypto space working on some P2E gaming middleware apps and very interested in running and potentially expanding the the team/guild myself. casey @ mpa . land
- f00zz 5y ago
  Can I play this for free?
  - himlion 5y ago
    They are working on that feature where you can play for free without earning tokens. I expect that to be done within a month or 2.
5560675260 5y ago
https://archive.vn/0BzHf https://archive.vn/0BzHf
vipa123 5y ago
So a Ponzi scheme...
- anm89 5y ago
  Stop calling everything a ponzi scheme. This does not resemble a ponzi scheme in almost any way. There is more than one type of scheme in the world. This is much closer to a pyramid scheme or just a contained economy with really bad incentives For example the Ponzi scheme version of this would be if you told people you were going to make a game with crypto as currency and told people that if they give you money to invest you will make them money in the in game currency. You would never actually make the game or the currency, you would just keep selling the promise of making the game to more and more people and then paying out the first people with the later people's money if they decide they want out. That would be a real Ponzi scheme. Pure cycling of investor funds with no underlying product. If mid way through you actually decide to make the game and attempt to sell real gameplay, it's no longer a Ponzi scheme, just a shitty company. (although based on the length of the preceeding time period, it's likely what you did was still classified as a Ponzi scheme at a certain point and you still have probably broken securities laws and have liability) Unlike Axie in which people are creating revenue in the system by buying stuff and is at least hypothetically possible to be solvent, the true Ponzi scheme by definition can never be solvent.
  - sodality2 5y ago
    For those confused about the difference: A Ponzi scheme "pays profits to earlier investors with funds from more recent investors" A pyramid scheme "recruits members via a promise of payments or services for enrolling others into the scheme, rather than supplying investments or sale of products"
    - golemotron 5y ago
      That isn't much difference. If there is a promise of payments for enrolling others, that is still a subsidy from later to earlier investors.
vertis 5y ago
I've been playing with https://euphoria.money https://euphoria.money which is a 'fork' of OHM on the Harmony block chain. It brings back memories of high-yield investment programs (HYIP), which are a type of Ponzi scheme. I don't want to accuse them of anything, but it's a little "if it's feels too good to be true, then it probably is" So much of the DeFI yield farming comes across somewhere between Ponzi scheme and the insanity that preceded the GFC, collateralized debt obligation (CDO) and the like.
- EMM_386 5y ago
  Just looking at that home page, they are saying the APY is 725,002.4%. If that isn't an insane red flag, I don't know what is.
  - hi5eyes 5y ago
    plenty of ohm forks/ponzis with 6 figure apy, until they rug/the reward token plummets ofc
  - vertis 5y ago
    That APY is misleading in several ways. It implies that if you put $100 in it will be 7250x bigger in a year. But this assumes that the price won't change, i.e. you get one token for $100 now and in a year you can exchange 1 token for $100. In reality this seems unlikely, given that Eurphoria($WAGMI) are giving out 0.81% per 8 hours 12% per 5 days, and doubling the amount of tokens in 30 days. So in 30 days I should be able to get $200 back out, and in 1 year I should be able to get out ~$725000. 2 years and I can take out over 3 billion. Yeah okay. It's more complex than that with bonded DAI, etc, so there is some fractional reserve of capital (at the moment it looks like 10%). The other thing with this and all these APY numbers (yield farming, incl) is that they imply that the numbers will stay the same. I.e. will hold for a whole year. In watching uniswap/sushiswap/etc this is not even remotely accurate. Those numbers (even 200%) are fleeting, they last for a day or a week. It's not stable and therefore those numbers are meaningless. If you're small, even being a liquidity providers on a more stable pair which return ~20-30% (i.e. a possible number) don't stack up once you include Ethereum fees. It takes quite a bit of time to earn back all the fees you spent setting it up (unless you have lots of capital) For comparison, OHM $100 now should be $4000 after one year or $300,000 after two years.
theptip 5y ago
> The number of Axie daily users increased by more than four times in under three months to 2bn in October, according to figures released by Sky Mavis. Analysts have now begun watching for signs of slowing growth. In case anyone else was confused by the 2B DAU figure which would dwarf TikTok by a couple orders of magnitude, this seems to be a typo for 2M. E.g. https://www.coindesk.com/business/2021/10/05/axie-infinity-nears-2m-daily-active-users-as-creator-raises-152m-series-b/ https://www.coindesk.com/business/2021/10/05/axie-infinity-n...
- thunkshift1 5y ago
  +1 ..2b is insanely high
- missedthecue 5y ago
  I was going to say... I've never even heard of Axie.
bsenftner 5y ago
Crypto... Trump... when is the run for moon real estate gonna start?
- kurthr 5y ago
  They started in Brooklyn... https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2021/03/15/the-brooklyn-bridge-is-actually-for-sale-an-nft-of-it-anyway/ https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2021/03/15/the-brooklyn-bri...
daenz 5y ago
I wonder if, in the future, a significant portion of the population will have a full time job playing one of these crypto games. They'll be paid based on their in-game social achievements, which will include things like "cares for the (virtual) environment", "demonstrates commitment to diversity", "encourages others to follow health mandates", "uses de-escalation techniques in conflicts." New mission types and achievements can be added dynamically by the local, state, and federal governments, to adapt rapidly to the current political environment. In order to receive your monthly housing and food credit stipend, you must regularly complete these activities. There will be no need for traditional work for many people, as every person will have access to the game world through their mobile device and biometric signin.
- SuoDuanDao 5y ago
  It could be a neat way for crowdsourcing and gamifying labour. Instead of 'kill 5 gryphons' an AR game could require the players to 'take 5 pictures of such-and-such' or the like. Sites like Taskrabbit and Mturk already do something similar but tying it to geography and a fun interface might pay dividends.
- wmf 5y ago
  This is impossible because the money has to come from somewhere. The 1% aren't going to pay people to play games.
  - bena 5y ago
    Organized sports disagrees.
    - kevingadd 5y ago
      Organized sports pull a lot of profit from the general populace and from companies that want to advertise to them, not just the 1%. Not to mention things like taxpayer-funded stadiums...
    - wmf 5y ago
      Sports don't employ a significant portion of the population. Gaming will definitely be "big" in the future but it can't be huge.
reggieband 5y ago
> Andreessen Horowitz’s cryptocurrency fund made one of its largest investments to date in Sky Mavis, leading a $152m financing that valued the company at $3bn. > Sky Mavis, which takes a 4.5 per cent cut of transactions within the game, has made about $1.2bn of revenues I mean, say what you want about this being a scam, ponzi scheme, etc. That is some real cash. I saw this game popping up on Twitch a few months ago and immediately realized it was some kind of crypto scheme. I thought it was gambling. The fact that this is generating billions of revenue and attracting hundreds of millions of brand-name financing amazes me. The game was released in 2018, about 3 years ago. It really makes me reconsider the group-think on hacker news. To write off this activity as a scam or criminal seems to be missing a bigger picture that we don't quite understand yet.
- smoldesu 5y ago
  Just because something makes a lot of money doesn't make it ethical.
  - adnzzzzZ 5y ago
    It's way more ethical for people across the world, primarily in 3rd world countries, to be able to share in the success of a company via its tokens than just being mined for data so some asshole in San Francisco can be paid 10 million dollars a month in rent.
    - stathibus 5y ago
      Ponzi schemes don't become ethical when they temporarily enrich people who are lower on the economic totem pole. I would argue they actually become less ethical.
      - adnzzzzZ 5y ago
        People sharing in the success of a new company is not a ponzi scheme. If a company is started from nothing, is providing value, and early adopters are paid with tokens as a way to jump start the business the tokens are simply being used to extract future value into the present. In some cases there's no actual value in the future because the product isn't good, but that doesn't make it a ponzi scheme, just a poor business.
hereme888 5y ago
Since this got posted on HN I asked myself, "does my crypto portfolio include Axie?" I saw it didn't, so I bought some, and already made a 3% profit, and likely to increase in the coming month. Thanks HN.
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  hope you can predict the top
  - hereme888 5y ago
    Oh I don't think I need to. From what I read in the news, it's a pretty safe bet it will keep going up. Not guaranteed, just very likely.
armchairhacker 5y ago
Look at how addicting Candy Crush, Clash of Clans, Genshin Impact, etc. are. Now imagine games like these but you have the ability to win real money. Or imagine a digital casino, because that's basically what this game is. I'm surprised these games aren't more popular. Maybe because if they truly become mainstream, they're basically guaranteed to be shut down or heavily regulated. Either that or millions of people will go broke, already-broke people will accumulate massive debt, and people will be playing these games instead of getting a job. It would probably affect so many people that it would actually cause major economic problems. Like, I honestly think crypto-games are really cool. I kind of want them to succeed and would play some myself (in moderation). But just, considering what we know about addiction and human nature, a game where you can actually win enough money to play them as a full-time job seems like the ultimate way to take money from disadvantaged people. "The addictiveness of social media, the addictiveness of lootboxes, the addictiveness of casinos - those have nothing on games where you can actually make money.
- delaaxe 5y ago
  Your grandparents used to say the same thing about the stock market
  - acdha 5y ago
    Quite the opposite, at least for mine: it was known that some companies were risky but that was why they referred to people pushing investment scams as conmen and supported regulation. Solid stocks and their dividends were a key part of a lot retirements, even if they couldn’t afford that many shares.
- slfnflctd 5y ago
  > Or imagine a digital casino I find pretty much every casino game beyond incredibly boring. The only appeal seems to be greed-- if you take that away (or decide you don't value it), they lose all luster for me. I know this opinion isn't universal - some people will play simulations of those games for hours with no real money on the line - but I can't be the only one. There are so many much more enjoyable games out there that cost a lot less (or nothing) to play. I've thought for a very long time that if they ever manage to come up with casino games that are actually fun for more people to play for long periods, it would be a catastrophe for gambling addiction. All the same, I can't help being curious what it would look like. I'm honestly amazed it hasn't happened yet; you have to wonder whether there's some kind of hard barrier holding it back. How anyone can sit so long in front of a machine which consists of nothing but pushing a single button completely befuddles me.
f00zz 5y ago
> Axie, which is loosely based on the Pokemon franchise, rewards players with tokens for winning battles and completing quests. So I looked for a gameplay video on YT, and it looks very much like a typical free-to-play mobile game. I'm guessing the difference is that you can exchange the in-game currency for actual money? Not sure why you'd need a blockchain if that's the case... Also, are these games actually fun? Or are people playing just for the money?
- simias 5y ago
  They're bad, grindy games. The appeal is specifically that they reward with crypto-tokens that can be traded on exchanges for real money. It's basically just a way to work around regulations. Technically the game doesn't deal with a real currency, but they give fungible tokens that can be relatively easily traded on third party exchanges. The financial aspect of these games makes zero sense, as is the whole concept of "play to earn" which should be immediately nonsensical for anybody who has a basic understanding of how the economy works. Yet another terrible, useless, scammy, pyramid-schemy, economically-inept concept brought to you by the cryptocurrency crowd. But hey, any day now it'll all be worth it!
  - himlion 5y ago
    Personally I think the PVP part of axie is pretty good as a game. It's strategic and a better player can easily win with a worse team.
  - bogwog 5y ago
    Can you even call it a game? It seems like work more than anything else. Its a shitty boring job where you’re paid less than a contractor to do work that is completely meaningless and unproductive.
    - himlion 5y ago
      Have you ever played it yourself? The game is better than the majority of mobile games.
dom96 5y ago
Every time I hear about this I am reminded of this strategy game I once played in ~2008. It was a strategy game and it promised to pay you money if you were able to capture certain territory. I cannot for the life of me remember it's name though, anyone recall something like this?
- karmicthreat 5y ago
  Project Entropia? I guess it's Entropia Universe now https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropia_Universe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropia_Universe
  - pigeons 5y ago
    PE was/is more of an FPS, and most of the prize was from killing mobs.
  - dom96 5y ago
    Nope, it was a far more simple 2D game from what I recall.
kristintynski 5y ago
fascinated by the memetic properties of dogebonk. viral loops galore
timmg 5y ago
From a big-picture perspective: people quitting jobs to "grind" through a game to "win" tokens makes no sense. There is literally no productive value from it. I don't understand how it can be anything other than a ponzi scheme. Playing games as entertainment is totally fine (and worthwhile). But if people in poor countries are quitting jobs to do this -- to "make money" -- it is a real tragedy.
- gandalfgreybeer 5y ago
  Only tangentially-related but this reminds me of something interesting I encountered since Venezuelans playing RuneScape to farm gold since that currency was more stable than their irl currency https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1018915121 https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1018915121 More related, I’m from one of those countries where people are doing that and it is truly a tragedy but it’s not as widespread (at least in my bubble). But the thing is, a lot of people quit jobs for “get rich quick” schemes here and this is just the latest chapter of that tragedy.
DonHopkins 5y ago
I've invented a new get high quick scheme called "NFTHC", which is based on "Proof of Weed" instead of "Proof of Work". It's 100% green, and based purely on sustainable renewable resources. NFTHC: Burn Weed, Not Coal!

65 points by samizdis 5y ago

himlion 5y ago

I'm heavily invested into axie (5 figures), happy to answer any questions.

chrispickels 5y ago
What is the source of the token rewards? Are the tokens pre-mined and then handed out based on games played on Axie’s servers? Just trying to understand the innovation. Is it primarily that game rewards can be exchanged on chain, while the granting of the rewards is still centralized?
- himlion 5y ago
  Two tokens: AXS is the governance token and is premined, mainly held to fund the team, given out as rewards to players and given out as rewards for keeping AXS staked. Used for breeding new Axies SLP is the token gained by playing the game, this token is also used for breeding new Axies. The game servers sign a message allowing you to claim the SLP from a smart contract on the ronin chain, this part is not completely decentralized.
elliekelly 5y ago
Did you pay the $1,000 entry fee yourself or did you get a “scholarship” like the article mentions? How does one invest more than the $1,000 entry fee? Do you sponsor “scholarships”? How long ago did you start playing and how much time have you put into the game? What return (if any) have you made on your time/monetary investment? What return (if any) do you expect to make and over what horizon? Thanks for agreeing to answer questions! I’m very intrigued!
- ajot 5y ago
  Not OP, but about to enter and give a scholarship to a friend. There is no 1kUSD entry fee. What you need to enter is to buy three Axies/Pokemon. The starting point for this is nowadays near 300 USD, but buying a decent team is around 500 USD.
- himlion 5y ago
  Yes, I have about 100 "scholars" from the Philippines working for me. I put in about $30,000 a few months ago. Return has been 300%+ I'm also involved in breeding new axies which is more complex and time consuming. The return of that varies a lot, but can be very profitable, very hard to put a number on that but I'd say las few weeks it was probably 250% APR if you didn't get too unlucky. I would probably cash out a lot of things, but I feel bad for making 100 people suddenly unemployed, so I will probably stop expanding but not actually selling off all my things.
  - zerostate 5y ago
    Would you be interested in selling/handing off your 100/person team to someone else? Am in the crypto space working on some P2E gaming middleware apps and very interested in running and potentially expanding the the team/guild myself. casey @ mpa . land
f00zz 5y ago
Can I play this for free?
- himlion 5y ago
  They are working on that feature where you can play for free without earning tokens. I expect that to be done within a month or 2.

5560675260 5y ago

https://archive.vn/0BzHf https://archive.vn/0BzHf

vipa123 5y ago

So a Ponzi scheme...

anm89 5y ago
Stop calling everything a ponzi scheme. This does not resemble a ponzi scheme in almost any way. There is more than one type of scheme in the world. This is much closer to a pyramid scheme or just a contained economy with really bad incentives For example the Ponzi scheme version of this would be if you told people you were going to make a game with crypto as currency and told people that if they give you money to invest you will make them money in the in game currency. You would never actually make the game or the currency, you would just keep selling the promise of making the game to more and more people and then paying out the first people with the later people's money if they decide they want out. That would be a real Ponzi scheme. Pure cycling of investor funds with no underlying product. If mid way through you actually decide to make the game and attempt to sell real gameplay, it's no longer a Ponzi scheme, just a shitty company. (although based on the length of the preceeding time period, it's likely what you did was still classified as a Ponzi scheme at a certain point and you still have probably broken securities laws and have liability) Unlike Axie in which people are creating revenue in the system by buying stuff and is at least hypothetically possible to be solvent, the true Ponzi scheme by definition can never be solvent.
- sodality2 5y ago
  For those confused about the difference: A Ponzi scheme "pays profits to earlier investors with funds from more recent investors" A pyramid scheme "recruits members via a promise of payments or services for enrolling others into the scheme, rather than supplying investments or sale of products"
  - golemotron 5y ago
    That isn't much difference. If there is a promise of payments for enrolling others, that is still a subsidy from later to earlier investors.

vertis 5y ago

I've been playing with https://euphoria.money https://euphoria.money which is a 'fork' of OHM on the Harmony block chain. It brings back memories of high-yield investment programs (HYIP), which are a type of Ponzi scheme. I don't want to accuse them of anything, but it's a little "if it's feels too good to be true, then it probably is" So much of the DeFI yield farming comes across somewhere between Ponzi scheme and the insanity that preceded the GFC, collateralized debt obligation (CDO) and the like.

EMM_386 5y ago
Just looking at that home page, they are saying the APY is 725,002.4%. If that isn't an insane red flag, I don't know what is.
- hi5eyes 5y ago
  plenty of ohm forks/ponzis with 6 figure apy, until they rug/the reward token plummets ofc
- vertis 5y ago
  That APY is misleading in several ways. It implies that if you put $100 in it will be 7250x bigger in a year. But this assumes that the price won't change, i.e. you get one token for $100 now and in a year you can exchange 1 token for $100. In reality this seems unlikely, given that Eurphoria($WAGMI) are giving out 0.81% per 8 hours 12% per 5 days, and doubling the amount of tokens in 30 days. So in 30 days I should be able to get $200 back out, and in 1 year I should be able to get out ~$725000. 2 years and I can take out over 3 billion. Yeah okay. It's more complex than that with bonded DAI, etc, so there is some fractional reserve of capital (at the moment it looks like 10%). The other thing with this and all these APY numbers (yield farming, incl) is that they imply that the numbers will stay the same. I.e. will hold for a whole year. In watching uniswap/sushiswap/etc this is not even remotely accurate. Those numbers (even 200%) are fleeting, they last for a day or a week. It's not stable and therefore those numbers are meaningless. If you're small, even being a liquidity providers on a more stable pair which return ~20-30% (i.e. a possible number) don't stack up once you include Ethereum fees. It takes quite a bit of time to earn back all the fees you spent setting it up (unless you have lots of capital) For comparison, OHM $100 now should be $4000 after one year or $300,000 after two years.

theptip 5y ago

> The number of Axie daily users increased by more than four times in under three months to 2bn in October, according to figures released by Sky Mavis. Analysts have now begun watching for signs of slowing growth. In case anyone else was confused by the 2B DAU figure which would dwarf TikTok by a couple orders of magnitude, this seems to be a typo for 2M. E.g. https://www.coindesk.com/business/2021/10/05/axie-infinity-nears-2m-daily-active-users-as-creator-raises-152m-series-b/ https://www.coindesk.com/business/2021/10/05/axie-infinity-n...

thunkshift1 5y ago
+1 ..2b is insanely high
missedthecue 5y ago
I was going to say... I've never even heard of Axie.

bsenftner 5y ago

Crypto... Trump... when is the run for moon real estate gonna start?

kurthr 5y ago
They started in Brooklyn... https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2021/03/15/the-brooklyn-bridge-is-actually-for-sale-an-nft-of-it-anyway/ https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2021/03/15/the-brooklyn-bri...

daenz 5y ago

I wonder if, in the future, a significant portion of the population will have a full time job playing one of these crypto games. They'll be paid based on their in-game social achievements, which will include things like "cares for the (virtual) environment", "demonstrates commitment to diversity", "encourages others to follow health mandates", "uses de-escalation techniques in conflicts." New mission types and achievements can be added dynamically by the local, state, and federal governments, to adapt rapidly to the current political environment. In order to receive your monthly housing and food credit stipend, you must regularly complete these activities. There will be no need for traditional work for many people, as every person will have access to the game world through their mobile device and biometric signin.

SuoDuanDao 5y ago
It could be a neat way for crowdsourcing and gamifying labour. Instead of 'kill 5 gryphons' an AR game could require the players to 'take 5 pictures of such-and-such' or the like. Sites like Taskrabbit and Mturk already do something similar but tying it to geography and a fun interface might pay dividends.
wmf 5y ago
This is impossible because the money has to come from somewhere. The 1% aren't going to pay people to play games.
- bena 5y ago
  Organized sports disagrees.
  - kevingadd 5y ago
    Organized sports pull a lot of profit from the general populace and from companies that want to advertise to them, not just the 1%. Not to mention things like taxpayer-funded stadiums...
  - wmf 5y ago
    Sports don't employ a significant portion of the population. Gaming will definitely be "big" in the future but it can't be huge.

reggieband 5y ago

> Andreessen Horowitz’s cryptocurrency fund made one of its largest investments to date in Sky Mavis, leading a $152m financing that valued the company at $3bn. > Sky Mavis, which takes a 4.5 per cent cut of transactions within the game, has made about $1.2bn of revenues I mean, say what you want about this being a scam, ponzi scheme, etc. That is some real cash. I saw this game popping up on Twitch a few months ago and immediately realized it was some kind of crypto scheme. I thought it was gambling. The fact that this is generating billions of revenue and attracting hundreds of millions of brand-name financing amazes me. The game was released in 2018, about 3 years ago. It really makes me reconsider the group-think on hacker news. To write off this activity as a scam or criminal seems to be missing a bigger picture that we don't quite understand yet.

smoldesu 5y ago
Just because something makes a lot of money doesn't make it ethical.
- adnzzzzZ 5y ago
  It's way more ethical for people across the world, primarily in 3rd world countries, to be able to share in the success of a company via its tokens than just being mined for data so some asshole in San Francisco can be paid 10 million dollars a month in rent.
  - stathibus 5y ago
    Ponzi schemes don't become ethical when they temporarily enrich people who are lower on the economic totem pole. I would argue they actually become less ethical.
    - adnzzzzZ 5y ago
      People sharing in the success of a new company is not a ponzi scheme. If a company is started from nothing, is providing value, and early adopters are paid with tokens as a way to jump start the business the tokens are simply being used to extract future value into the present. In some cases there's no actual value in the future because the product isn't good, but that doesn't make it a ponzi scheme, just a poor business.

hereme888 5y ago

Since this got posted on HN I asked myself, "does my crypto portfolio include Axie?" I saw it didn't, so I bought some, and already made a 3% profit, and likely to increase in the coming month. Thanks HN.

jazzyjackson 5y ago
hope you can predict the top
- hereme888 5y ago
  Oh I don't think I need to. From what I read in the news, it's a pretty safe bet it will keep going up. Not guaranteed, just very likely.

armchairhacker 5y ago

Look at how addicting Candy Crush, Clash of Clans, Genshin Impact, etc. are. Now imagine games like these but you have the ability to win real money. Or imagine a digital casino, because that's basically what this game is. I'm surprised these games aren't more popular. Maybe because if they truly become mainstream, they're basically guaranteed to be shut down or heavily regulated. Either that or millions of people will go broke, already-broke people will accumulate massive debt, and people will be playing these games instead of getting a job. It would probably affect so many people that it would actually cause major economic problems. Like, I honestly think crypto-games are really cool. I kind of want them to succeed and would play some myself (in moderation). But just, considering what we know about addiction and human nature, a game where you can actually win enough money to play them as a full-time job seems like the ultimate way to take money from disadvantaged people. "The addictiveness of social media, the addictiveness of lootboxes, the addictiveness of casinos - those have nothing on games where you can actually make money.

delaaxe 5y ago
Your grandparents used to say the same thing about the stock market
- acdha 5y ago
  Quite the opposite, at least for mine: it was known that some companies were risky but that was why they referred to people pushing investment scams as conmen and supported regulation. Solid stocks and their dividends were a key part of a lot retirements, even if they couldn’t afford that many shares.
slfnflctd 5y ago
> Or imagine a digital casino I find pretty much every casino game beyond incredibly boring. The only appeal seems to be greed-- if you take that away (or decide you don't value it), they lose all luster for me. I know this opinion isn't universal - some people will play simulations of those games for hours with no real money on the line - but I can't be the only one. There are so many much more enjoyable games out there that cost a lot less (or nothing) to play. I've thought for a very long time that if they ever manage to come up with casino games that are actually fun for more people to play for long periods, it would be a catastrophe for gambling addiction. All the same, I can't help being curious what it would look like. I'm honestly amazed it hasn't happened yet; you have to wonder whether there's some kind of hard barrier holding it back. How anyone can sit so long in front of a machine which consists of nothing but pushing a single button completely befuddles me.

f00zz 5y ago

> Axie, which is loosely based on the Pokemon franchise, rewards players with tokens for winning battles and completing quests. So I looked for a gameplay video on YT, and it looks very much like a typical free-to-play mobile game. I'm guessing the difference is that you can exchange the in-game currency for actual money? Not sure why you'd need a blockchain if that's the case... Also, are these games actually fun? Or are people playing just for the money?

simias 5y ago
They're bad, grindy games. The appeal is specifically that they reward with crypto-tokens that can be traded on exchanges for real money. It's basically just a way to work around regulations. Technically the game doesn't deal with a real currency, but they give fungible tokens that can be relatively easily traded on third party exchanges. The financial aspect of these games makes zero sense, as is the whole concept of "play to earn" which should be immediately nonsensical for anybody who has a basic understanding of how the economy works. Yet another terrible, useless, scammy, pyramid-schemy, economically-inept concept brought to you by the cryptocurrency crowd. But hey, any day now it'll all be worth it!
- himlion 5y ago
  Personally I think the PVP part of axie is pretty good as a game. It's strategic and a better player can easily win with a worse team.
- bogwog 5y ago
  Can you even call it a game? It seems like work more than anything else. Its a shitty boring job where you’re paid less than a contractor to do work that is completely meaningless and unproductive.
  - himlion 5y ago
    Have you ever played it yourself? The game is better than the majority of mobile games.

dom96 5y ago

Every time I hear about this I am reminded of this strategy game I once played in ~2008. It was a strategy game and it promised to pay you money if you were able to capture certain territory. I cannot for the life of me remember it's name though, anyone recall something like this?

karmicthreat 5y ago
Project Entropia? I guess it's Entropia Universe now https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropia_Universe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropia_Universe
- pigeons 5y ago
  PE was/is more of an FPS, and most of the prize was from killing mobs.
- dom96 5y ago
  Nope, it was a far more simple 2D game from what I recall.

kristintynski 5y ago

fascinated by the memetic properties of dogebonk. viral loops galore

timmg 5y ago

From a big-picture perspective: people quitting jobs to "grind" through a game to "win" tokens makes no sense. There is literally no productive value from it. I don't understand how it can be anything other than a ponzi scheme. Playing games as entertainment is totally fine (and worthwhile). But if people in poor countries are quitting jobs to do this -- to "make money" -- it is a real tragedy.

gandalfgreybeer 5y ago
Only tangentially-related but this reminds me of something interesting I encountered since Venezuelans playing RuneScape to farm gold since that currency was more stable than their irl currency https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1018915121 https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1018915121 More related, I’m from one of those countries where people are doing that and it is truly a tragedy but it’s not as widespread (at least in my bubble). But the thing is, a lot of people quit jobs for “get rich quick” schemes here and this is just the latest chapter of that tragedy.

DonHopkins 5y ago

I've invented a new get high quick scheme called "NFTHC", which is based on "Proof of Weed" instead of "Proof of Work". It's 100% green, and based purely on sustainable renewable resources. NFTHC: Burn Weed, Not Coal!