5 ms·

NFTs in the current form might be pretty useless as such (just a proof you "first purchased" a jpeg). But I think in the gaming space this will become huge and

NFTs in the current form might be pretty useless as such (just a proof you "first purchased" a jpeg). But I think in the gaming space this will become huge and actually makes sense - use elements (items, characters, stats,...) and their history in different and independent games if the developer wants to integrate them. No lock-in and portable, not tied to game-specific accounts.

meheleventyone 5y ago
> if the developer wants to integrate them What’s the incentive for the developer to do this? And more importantly how does my M4 rifle work in an epic fantasy role playing game?
- mantenpanther 5y ago
  There might be many, this is a new field. A starter would be an existing userbase holding NFTs that enter the game. Different forms of monetarization (entering with NFTs, storing progress on the NFTs, marketplaces,...) might be a thing.
  - meheleventyone 5y ago
    There might be none as well, this is a new field. The problem with your first suggestion is that you do an awful lot of work to map another games NFTs to your own items but presumably get none of the money from them. You also have an immediate balancing problem. And the better way is to just make a game that those players want to play, which is how game populations move around now anyway. The only way I can see supporting external NFTs as worthwhile for a game developer is if they’re already table stakes for taking part. Or say you support BAYC, all that work to address 10k potential users?
    - mantenpanther 5y ago
      Valid points, time will tell. I can image there will be neutral intermediate services (NFT-platforms) that provide assets and smart contracts/APIs for integration for small fees.
- drmanachin 5y ago
  - meheleventyone 5y ago
    Yes all the time but this is specifically about game development as a business by my reading so I’m interested in why this would be appealing in that context.
mathnmusic 5y ago
What incentive does the developer of the second game have to support a portable account? We've seen how it played out with social networks. And if both game 1 and game 2 are by the same developer, then all that's needed for portability is a common account management service owned by the said developer.
- mantenpanther 5y ago
  The NFTs might be independent of the game, maybe just exist as data structure on a neutral NFT smart contract with an existing network effect/reputation.
- nfin 5y ago
  valid question. Possibly the big fan-base ready to play a game where there can log in easily and use some of their hard earned collector items. True, with social networks it played out differently, but social networks is a rare category where the almost only thing you care is having/finding all people you know, all other features are kind of irrelevant. Joining another social networks adds close to nothing (as long as you can chat with those people) and only add friction. A bit like money… the more uses it, the better, it doesn’t need to do many things, the very only thing you care, is all people you know using the same. Many other things work similarly, but no way in that extent. Mostly you care a lot more about additional features. For example Airbnb works better the more people use it, but you also care about important features, and you would switch to another similar service if it was a lot better and has a reasonable amount of choice/venues, as you don’t need everyone around you using it (which is the case for money and for the main social network you use… at least for the masses who want the fastest solution on most days)
andy_andy_ 5y ago
this runs into the boundary issue, though. getting your hat asset you bought in HatWars into your Garden Town save file isn’t trivial. the two games’ developers need to use the same assets or one needs to remake the asset. it’s cool for the player but work and money for the developers that i’m not sure provides them much value
- mantenpanther 5y ago
  NFTs don't have to be (are not) the asset, just parameters/stats and the graphical representations can look different according to the game.
  - meheleventyone 5y ago
    Right but then the developer has to decide what the stats are and make a graphical representation for every NFT. In fairness that could just be some free currency for owning an NFT but it’s not exactly compelling. The compelling version makes the item worthwhile but that’s a lot of work the holder of the NFT essentially expects for free. The metaverse version of this is NFTs that drag around their own code, art and so on. That can run in a sandboxed way and there are protocols for game entity communication and so on. But this level of interoperability is a pipe dream outside of games like Second Life.
  - Hjfrf 5y ago
    Even that doesn't necessarily translate. What does +5 attack sword do in farmville?
    - mantenpanther 5y ago
      Nothing, this wouldn't make sense.
      - grey-area 5y ago
        QED
- 5y ago
jayd16 5y ago
I can't help but think that if this was feasible and desired we'd have working examples of it even if tied to game accounts. If you're writing a game and trusting data from another game...you have a trusted authority and you can just use traditional apis, no?
grey-area 5y ago
Back here in the real world, game publishers are instead selling non-transferable serial numbers on skins as ‘NFTs’. None of the things you mention are happening or likely to happen.
yed 5y ago
It helps to think about this more clearly if you forget the NFT bit and think about just doing this with standard tech. What stops developers today from implementing publicly documented formats for in-game elements? What stops other developers from writing code to import these elements from one game to another? All an NFT adds is a verifiable signature and a pubic database. The signature bit seems completely irrelevant. Why would one game developer care if did or did not pay a different developer? If it's the same developer, they already have some way to track that you bought the items. The public database is more useful here, but all this data is usually sitting on your local disk anyways. Devs could make use of it today if they were so inclined.
- mantenpanther 5y ago
  Being technically a verifiable signature, this brings new incentives for users (emotions, possibly valuable) and devs (monetary, user base) which might change the game. But I agree, until we see more advanced intermediary-platforms only the simplest forms like unique avatars or simple rpg-items will be possible to integrate.
  - saberience 5y ago
    NFT technology doesn't add anything for games that isn't already available using guess what, a database! Using a MySQL or whatever database allows single use only items, one-off items that only player can have, multi-use items, any possible combination of items is possible using simple SQL. It's not rocket science, the only difference (which doesn't really add any utility to games) is the idea of this database being public. Think about it, you could implement items in a game using NFT tech OR a database: would the players notice anything functionally different in the game? If not: why the big deal about NFTs in gaming?
    - mantenpanther 5y ago
      Because of ownership and the idea of digital property. In a MySQL the provider owns all data, with an NFT the key holder owns the data.
dagmx 5y ago
Your proposal doesn't really make sense from a technical or financial perspective. Technically, most games aren't interchangeable with assets. There's a wide array of asset formats and bespoke optimizations. It's very hard to take something from one game to another unless they share an engine. The alternative is the second developer would need to make a corresponding asset for every other one. Though they won't get financially rewarded for it and there's no guarantee that the users will buy the future assets from them instead of elsewhere. I see this suggestion come up a lot in crypto circles and it's almost certainly always from people who have no experience with game or other real time development, trivializing the cost of asset creation.

meheleventyone 5y ago

> if the developer wants to integrate them What’s the incentive for the developer to do this? And more importantly how does my M4 rifle work in an epic fantasy role playing game?

mantenpanther 5y ago
There might be many, this is a new field. A starter would be an existing userbase holding NFTs that enter the game. Different forms of monetarization (entering with NFTs, storing progress on the NFTs, marketplaces,...) might be a thing.
- meheleventyone 5y ago
  There might be none as well, this is a new field. The problem with your first suggestion is that you do an awful lot of work to map another games NFTs to your own items but presumably get none of the money from them. You also have an immediate balancing problem. And the better way is to just make a game that those players want to play, which is how game populations move around now anyway. The only way I can see supporting external NFTs as worthwhile for a game developer is if they’re already table stakes for taking part. Or say you support BAYC, all that work to address 10k potential users?
  - mantenpanther 5y ago
    Valid points, time will tell. I can image there will be neutral intermediate services (NFT-platforms) that provide assets and smart contracts/APIs for integration for small fees.
drmanachin 5y ago
- meheleventyone 5y ago
  Yes all the time but this is specifically about game development as a business by my reading so I’m interested in why this would be appealing in that context.

mathnmusic 5y ago

What incentive does the developer of the second game have to support a portable account? We've seen how it played out with social networks. And if both game 1 and game 2 are by the same developer, then all that's needed for portability is a common account management service owned by the said developer.

mantenpanther 5y ago
The NFTs might be independent of the game, maybe just exist as data structure on a neutral NFT smart contract with an existing network effect/reputation.
nfin 5y ago
valid question. Possibly the big fan-base ready to play a game where there can log in easily and use some of their hard earned collector items. True, with social networks it played out differently, but social networks is a rare category where the almost only thing you care is having/finding all people you know, all other features are kind of irrelevant. Joining another social networks adds close to nothing (as long as you can chat with those people) and only add friction. A bit like money… the more uses it, the better, it doesn’t need to do many things, the very only thing you care, is all people you know using the same. Many other things work similarly, but no way in that extent. Mostly you care a lot more about additional features. For example Airbnb works better the more people use it, but you also care about important features, and you would switch to another similar service if it was a lot better and has a reasonable amount of choice/venues, as you don’t need everyone around you using it (which is the case for money and for the main social network you use… at least for the masses who want the fastest solution on most days)

andy_andy_ 5y ago

this runs into the boundary issue, though. getting your hat asset you bought in HatWars into your Garden Town save file isn’t trivial. the two games’ developers need to use the same assets or one needs to remake the asset. it’s cool for the player but work and money for the developers that i’m not sure provides them much value

mantenpanther 5y ago
NFTs don't have to be (are not) the asset, just parameters/stats and the graphical representations can look different according to the game.
- meheleventyone 5y ago
  Right but then the developer has to decide what the stats are and make a graphical representation for every NFT. In fairness that could just be some free currency for owning an NFT but it’s not exactly compelling. The compelling version makes the item worthwhile but that’s a lot of work the holder of the NFT essentially expects for free. The metaverse version of this is NFTs that drag around their own code, art and so on. That can run in a sandboxed way and there are protocols for game entity communication and so on. But this level of interoperability is a pipe dream outside of games like Second Life.
- Hjfrf 5y ago
  Even that doesn't necessarily translate. What does +5 attack sword do in farmville?
  - mantenpanther 5y ago
    Nothing, this wouldn't make sense.
    - grey-area 5y ago
      QED
5y ago

jayd16 5y ago

I can't help but think that if this was feasible and desired we'd have working examples of it even if tied to game accounts. If you're writing a game and trusting data from another game...you have a trusted authority and you can just use traditional apis, no?

grey-area 5y ago

Back here in the real world, game publishers are instead selling non-transferable serial numbers on skins as ‘NFTs’. None of the things you mention are happening or likely to happen.

yed 5y ago

It helps to think about this more clearly if you forget the NFT bit and think about just doing this with standard tech. What stops developers today from implementing publicly documented formats for in-game elements? What stops other developers from writing code to import these elements from one game to another? All an NFT adds is a verifiable signature and a pubic database. The signature bit seems completely irrelevant. Why would one game developer care if did or did not pay a different developer? If it's the same developer, they already have some way to track that you bought the items. The public database is more useful here, but all this data is usually sitting on your local disk anyways. Devs could make use of it today if they were so inclined.

mantenpanther 5y ago
Being technically a verifiable signature, this brings new incentives for users (emotions, possibly valuable) and devs (monetary, user base) which might change the game. But I agree, until we see more advanced intermediary-platforms only the simplest forms like unique avatars or simple rpg-items will be possible to integrate.
- saberience 5y ago
  NFT technology doesn't add anything for games that isn't already available using guess what, a database! Using a MySQL or whatever database allows single use only items, one-off items that only player can have, multi-use items, any possible combination of items is possible using simple SQL. It's not rocket science, the only difference (which doesn't really add any utility to games) is the idea of this database being public. Think about it, you could implement items in a game using NFT tech OR a database: would the players notice anything functionally different in the game? If not: why the big deal about NFTs in gaming?
  - mantenpanther 5y ago
    Because of ownership and the idea of digital property. In a MySQL the provider owns all data, with an NFT the key holder owns the data.

dagmx 5y ago

Your proposal doesn't really make sense from a technical or financial perspective. Technically, most games aren't interchangeable with assets. There's a wide array of asset formats and bespoke optimizations. It's very hard to take something from one game to another unless they share an engine. The alternative is the second developer would need to make a corresponding asset for every other one. Though they won't get financially rewarded for it and there's no guarantee that the users will buy the future assets from them instead of elsewhere. I see this suggestion come up a lot in crypto circles and it's almost certainly always from people who have no experience with game or other real time development, trivializing the cost of asset creation.